


Of a Linear Circle - Part VII - Exile

by flamethrower



Series: Of a Linear Circle [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alfonso X, Alternate Universe, Berenguela of Castile, Blanche of Castile - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Elves of the River Sélune, Ferdinand III, GFY, Historical Figures, Historical References, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Kingdom of Castile and Leon, Kingdom of France - Freeform, Louis IX, Margaret of Province, Marie of Brienne, Murder, Normandy - Freeform, Politics, Suicide, The Deathly Hallows, The perils of inconveniently worded contracts, backstabbing, poc characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-18 11:36:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16117592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower
Summary: Salazar Deslizarse has the very bad habit of getting himself banned from his own kingdom, but this time he didn't actually deserve it. At least the Peverell brothers went to France on purpose...





	1. Exiled

**Author's Note:**

> Awesomeness in beta land: @norcumi, @jabberwockypie, @sanerontheinside, & @mrsstanley!
> 
> I've been looking forward to posting this story for almost a year now. Gleeeeee.

When the betrothal of Louis IX, King of France to Lady Margaret of Provence is announced, it’s considered a relief to those in Ferdinand’s Court. Louis’s mother Blanche, an _infanta_ of Castile, has performed well enough in politics of late that many nobles feared she would turn her attention back to the land of her birth and contest her cousin’s rule. Or worse in their eyes—reject her son’s birthright and continue to rule the Kingdom of France on her own.

Salazar thinks they’re all being ridiculous. It isn’t the Queen of France’s politics they fear, but the woman herself, proven to be both intelligent and powerful.

 _Estefania, you would be committing acts of murder by no_ w, he thinks in distant grief. Even her three-times-removed great-grandson, Salazar’s grandnephew, has fallen for the nonsense that was just beginning to plague non-magical circles nearly two hundred-fifty years ago. Salazar is reassured by the actions of Diego’s wife Genoveva, who is very good at playing the role of dutiful spouse in public, but rules their House when at home in Burgos.

Neither of his sister’s descendants know who Salazar is. They weren’t even informed why his presence was needed to oversee Diego’s private ascension as Magical Marqués of Burgos.

Salazar would much prefer that _not_ be necessary, but he still lives, and the magic of the land and crown insists that Salazar still holds the title he was granted at age twelve. He must always declare who has the right to act in his stead before the new Magical Marqués can do so. Not even the change of the title narrowing in scope from the whole of Castile to Burgos released Salazar from that responsibility. He supposes nothing will unless he were to swear allegiance to another throne—and given some of what he knows of the strife to come, he’d really rather not.

Ferdinand III knows why, and he despises Salazar for it. Salazar would not be lingering in Court if it were not for the fact that his presence enrages his king. In Ferdinand’s eyes, and in the eyes of many rulers who have held Castile or León (or both) through the long years, a man who cannot die is an affront to their God and his Son. It makes Salazar long for Queen Berenguela, who is sensible enough to realize that if her God hasn’t struck him dead, then of course there must be a reason why he lingers.

If Salazar cannot have understanding, then he’ll settle for being the reason why a ruler grinds his teeth through every gathering of his Court. He already plans to move on when the summer military campaigns begin. It would be pleasing to see Iberia united again, but the cost—that, Salazar does not approve of. He doesn’t want to witness something he cannot stop.

Ferdinand’s summons ruins that plan. Salazar wonders what is driving the king to request his presence when it is nearing midnight.

“You know that the marriage of Marie to Baldwin will occur this summer,” Ferdinand says without any hint of hospitality at all.

“I’m aware. I’d planned to attend.”

Ferdinand gives him a narrow-eyed look. “No. You will attend to the royal wedding in France as my appointed magical representative.”

“That, Your Majesty, is _not_ my role in this Court. That is the role of your Alférez, or one of your recognized magical nobles.” Those with magic are known only to the king, though Blanche would also recognize their political value. Salazar is no longer aware of who is or is not magical in the north of Iberia any longer, and he often prefers it that way.

“Your role in my Court is most unwanted, Salazar Fernan.” Ferdinand stares at him, but Salazar is not the one who looks away first. “The Magical Alférez must remain here for the campaigns that will reclaim the whole of our lands from heretics.”

Salazar manages not to roll his eyes, but only just. “Of course they must. I am still already indisposed—”

“The Kingdom of France must _not_ let itself lose what Christian magicians they have due to fear!” Ferdinand interrupts him. “Too few remain as it is. The Crusades take our young men in droves. There must be those left behind who can defend their realm if the tide ever turns.”

Salazar thinks about reminding this idiot that he is not Christian, and therefore not the best choice, but decides not to. Ferdinand already wishes to be rid of him, and Salazar has no desire to discover what it’s like to burn to death without the mercy of dying afterwards. “Fine. Then I will attend to both.”

Ferdinand sighs. “You will not. You will not interfere in my family’s affairs any more than you have already done.”

“Don’t insult your mother, you young idiot,” Salazar retorts. Not when Berenguela travels on Ferdinand’s behalf to gain support for her son’s campaigns of reunification. “I promised her that I would see to her namesake’s affairs, and that includes the marriage of your niece to the future Emperor of Constantinople.”

“My half-niece,” Ferdinand corrects in an icy voice. “And your fathering of her is exactly why you will stay away. You are ill fortune that will not taint her marriage.”

“You say that as if I am Death Incarnate,” Salazar says, trying to decide if he is amused or outraged. Then again, there is no reason why he cannot be both. It won’t be the first time that old magical oaths meant he had to obey the words of a complete idiot.

“You cannot die. Mother might consider you blessed, but men are wise and know better.”

Salazar glances up at the ceiling. “Please cease to insult a woman who is your strongest ally. I have no wish to assassinate another monarch when this century is still so young. Or do you forget that while you cannot get rid of me, I can most certainly rid the world of you?”

Ferdinand smiles, a cold expression that Salazar would rather see on the man’s corpse. “I have not forgotten. That is why the Crown of Castile and León to which you are pledged is ordering you to attend to the betrothed couple in France from the beginning of March until Death takes me to the gates that reveal the Kingdom of Heaven. Only then you will be released from that instruction. The one exception granted you to temporarily depart France before that time is if you are needed to oversee the confirmation of Diego’s Heir as Magical Marqués of Burgos.”

Salazar regards his king, feeling the prickling magic beneath Ferdinand’s words. “Your Majesty, I truly, utterly loathe you, and hope you die a horrific death.”

“Marqués, trust me when I say that I feel similarly about you.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Salazar is not the idiot that his king would likely prefer him to be. He knows how to keep and maintain allies. The Queen of France, Blanche of Castile, is glad to see him again, welcoming him into the French Court by naming him a trusted friend and important ranking Marqués in Ferdinand III’s kingdom. None ever seem to notice that Blanche doesn’t name the lands Salazar is supposed to rule. All her courtiers need to hear is that Salazar is in favor with their Queen and a foreign King; the rest is inconsequential. Their disappointment lies in the fact that Salazar has no sons or daughters available for the making of political alliances.

 _And that is why I do not tell anyone if I’ve fathered a child_ , Salazar thinks, trying to stomach the company of Blanche’s supporters until he can be rid of them. Such has only happened twice since Marion’s death, but his first five children were each hounded for political alliances, as were the latter two daughters. He’ll not put another of his through that if it can be avoided.

It appears otherwise, but his youngest daughter’s marriage is political by chance. She is fortunate enough to be wed to a man who adores her. It’s Salazar’s granddaughter whom he fears for. Magical decree now keeps him from seeing to Marie’s safety, leaving him to stew in impotent fury.

“You could not have found an older match for him?” Salazar asks Blanche of the future queen. Louis IX is now nineteen, but his betrothed will only be thirteen years old when they are wed in May.

“I did try, but it is difficult of late to find someone of suitable blood who is not a relation,” Blanche replies. “If they are not a blood relative, then they’re an enemy who is in no mood to talk of marriage contracts.”

“And the fact that your son will be able to lay claim to Provença has absolutely nothing to do with your choice.”

Blanche smirks at him, a reminder that he might have had too much influence on her political education. “No, Salazar. That is merely considered sensible.”

She is more persistent now in her private attempts to learn the secret of his longevity. He has told her often that he made a deal with Death, but she never believes him. No one does.

Magicians hid their powers from others centuries ago, which safeguards them, but it had a side effect Salazar did not foresee. The knowledge of the other, of the ethereal, is disappearing from magical awareness. The non-magical have no trouble believing that there is a being called Death, but they think of him—and it is always _him_ —as an angel of God, not a universal Aspect for all living things. The Church of Rome loudly insists that this world is the center of existence. If that is not the height of arrogance, especially given their religion, then Salazar has never understood the meaning of the word.

He is sensible enough to ingratiate himself to Louis and his bride before he ever mentions magic to them. Blanche knows who he is and what he is capable of, but Louis will soon rule in her place. It will be his words that decide whether or not magicians will be a welcome part of the Kingdom of France, if a secret one, or if Louis will ban them as the English did.

Salazar doesn’t want to be responsible for that, either. The magicians of France have hidden themselves away so well that the few magical nobles remaining are building a school. It is less about a need to educate the young and more a necessary means for those who remain to be able to speak to one another without fear of discovery. Maybe one day it will only serve as a school, but he still hopes the same for Hogewáþ.

He asks the young couple one question a month after their marriage, and that single question regarding magic tells Salazar everything he needs to know about the new king and queen. “Congratulations,” Salazar tells Blanche in the privacy of her personal chambers. “You’ve bound your son in marriage to a religious fanatic.”

“Piousness is a virtue, Salazar,” Blanche reminds him, pouring two goblets of wine.

“Piousness, perhaps,” he allows. “But you will have no acknowledged magical nobles remaining in your kingdom by the time Louis and Margaret’s reign is done. Those magicians will rightfully fear for their lives.”

Blanche frowns. “Louis has never spoken in such a way before.”

Salazar releases an amused snort before he accepts the second goblet. “He wasn’t in love before.”

“Love?” Blanche shakes her head. “They’ve known each other for three months. She should not hold such easy sway over my son.”

“Then you didn’t mean to place a sheep upon the throne?” Blanche’s eyes narrow, which is all the answer Salazar needs. “You did exactly that. Blanche, you will not live forever. You can’t realistically expect to rule through Louis for all of his life!”

“I would have no difficulty at all if you would but tell me what keeps you young and hale,” Blanche responds in a sweet voice.

Salazar peers into his goblet. “Terrible wine.” He smiles when she laughs, but the urge to laugh has not been with him of late.

Blanche has always been very observant. “You are troubled by something else.”

“I hope you’re not offended by my presence in France, as I may be here for a very long time.” Salazar tells her what Ferdinand did, invoking the magic of the Crown to be certain his words were obeyed.

“What did you do to anger him?” she asks.

“I exist,” Salazar says in a dry voice. “Worse, I am father to your niece, his youngest sister.”

“Of all the foolish things to be so offended by! Of course, I have always wondered if you were also—”

Salazar quickly shakes his head to keep those words from gaining further ground. “Absolutely not. Your sister Berenguela and her husband’s other children were all conceived during their marriage before the Pope rudely voided their contract. Berenguela’s namesake was conceived after she returned to Burgos.”

Blanche raises an eyebrow. “The timing was very good, then.”

“Or perhaps everyone was convinced to conveniently forget that Berenguela of Castile should have been born a full two months prior to her actual birthdate,” Salazar counters, smiling. “None of us ever thought my daughter would be considered for a political union, not after Pope Innocent destroyed the legitimacy of her named parents’ marriage.”

“And my foolish nephew Ferdinand banished you to France in order to keep you away from a niece he himself has never met.” Blanche draws Salazar into her arms. “I am sorry. I know how careful you are to watch over your family. Or in this particular instance, _our_ family.”

“Thank you.” It’s getting difficult to accept another’s touch again. Nizar made him promise not to let that happen, but sometimes it’s hard to keep to that vow.

He didn’t need to think of his brother in this moment. Now he feels doubly burdened.

Blanche promises to speak to her son in the matter of magic and the kingdom’s defence. Maybe she even begins to do so, but then an assassination attempt makes it a moot point. Much later, Salazar discovers the attempt on the king’s life was made on the orders of men from Toulouse, those still dissatisfied by the Treaty of Paris signed five years previous.

In the meantime, he’s just finished killing three well-armed assassins with his wand when the new queen begins shrieking that Salazar is a demon sorcerer. The new king is shouting for his arrest.

“You cannot possibly be serious,” Salazar says in disbelief, given that the enemy is dead and these idiot royal children are alive.

Unfortunately, they are both quite serious, and also attempting to stab him. Salazar yanks his brother’s Cloak out of his pouch and hides beneath its gossamer folds. His sudden disappearance doesn’t endear him to young Queen Margaret, who now wants him found, hung, drawn and quartered, and then set on fire for good measure.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit much?” Salazar murmurs under his breath, watching from the limb of a tree as armed men search the grounds. Then he sees the fear in Margaret’s eyes and can only sigh. Sometimes he thinks the scrying that told him of what was to come, those warning glimpses of this type of fanaticism, were as much a blessing as they are a curse.

“What in God’s name did you do, sacrifice a goat, bathe in its blood, and wear its horns in front of them?” Blanche asks when Salazar can finally reach her private chambers—two days later. “It’s taken quite a bit of effort to keep them from declaring _war_ against Ferdinand for his sending of a sorcerer to our kingdom! It required my oath that Ferdinand didn’t know of your abilities to calm them, and I do hope God forgives me for both the oath and the lie.”

“God will likely be pleased you saved another innocent from an unmerciful death.” Salazar bundles up the Cloak in his hands and slumps down in a chair. “I’ll have to leave your Court, even if I cannot leave this kingdom.”

“I’ll send word to Ferdinand. Surely my nephew will see reason,” Blanche says.

Salazar shakes his head. “Ferdinand probably meant for my appearance here to be seen as an insult in the first place. It would give him the means to declare a just war and lay claim to your kingdom as well as the Caliphate. Save your words for those who matter, Blanche.”

Giving in to what is politically inevitable, Blanche offers Salazar a residence far to the west of Paris, a keep built near the Sélune River when magicians were less feared. “It is no palace, but it has weathered many ocean storms and even more invading armies. It will harbor a fugitive fleeing the king’s justice quite well,” Blanche explains before she sends him off. “It belonged to my mother before the Treaty was signed. I’ll conveniently forget to mention its existence to my children.”

“Then I’m in your debt.” It’s a kinder alternative than hiding under an Invisibility Cloak until Ferdinand does Salazar the grand favor of dying.

“There would be no debt at all if you told me how to maintain myself in the same manner that preserves you.”

Salazar smiles at her. “I’ve told you the truth throughout your life. Would you prefer I start lying to you now?”

Blanche raises both eyebrows. “And if I were to ask how one gained an angel’s attention?”

“These lands still need you,” Salazar says. “I wouldn’t chance an encounter with Death in any great hurry, were I in your place.”

“Then what made _you_ chance it?” Blanche asks.

“Necessity,” he replies, but that is not the entire truth.

Salazar knew already that he would succeed. Those circumstances have yet to cease being awkward.

 

*          *          *          *

 

Salazar has forgotten Blanche’s penchant for understating a place’s importance. The moment he steps foot onto the estate in Normandy, he knows at once that it was held as a magical property until sometime in the last twenty years. The wards that keep the land hidden from non-magical eyes are only now beginning to fade. He renews them before he bothers to venture closer to the building.

It is no mere cottage, but a keep comparative in size to his home in Ipuzko. He is also sharing it with elves.

“I’d no idea you had a clan in Normandy,” Salazar says to the elf that greets him at the door. “Or that you’d taken on this sort of role.”

“The survivors of our clan, the Elves of the River Sélune, were granted sanctuary by the last magical lord to live here,” Gizzet tells him as he ushers Salazar indoors. “Queen Blanche and deceased King Louis wrote our safety into the laws of the kingdom so that we may shelter here, in this keep, in perpetuity. We need only care for the guests the royal family sends our way.”

“I imagine you will see few guests after the death of Blanche, as her son and his new bride fear magic.”

Gizzet’s ear twitches. “We have heard such, but you are welcome here, Lord Salazar. The Queen Blanche sent a hawk with a missive to warn us of your arrival. The old lord’s chambers are yours for the whole of the time you need dwell here.”

“That is very kind of you, especially as I have no idea how long that will be.” Scrying has only shown him an image of a man dying in his bed, but not enough detail to even guess at Ferdinand’s age. His king could die of wounds received in battle tomorrow, or die of old age a century from now.

The former lord’s chambers are composed of a sitting room filled with tapestries and books, padded wooden furniture, and a fireplace with a shelf above it. The fire burning in the hearth is a blessing after a journey of many miles, unable to rely on Desplazarse for lack of known landmarks. He might not be capable of dying, but he still hates the cold, and Normandy does not yet seem willing to admit that it is summer.

He pulls one of the chairs close to the hearth and sits down. The next thing he knows, another elf is shaking him awake and asking if he’d like supper, or if he’d prefer to sleep through the meal. He joins them in the kitchen, but between the heat, the comforting return of elf chatter, and the food, he sleeps through part of the evening. He’s been awake for too many days, and that sort of debt always catches up at once.

Salazar rouses by ten o’clock the next morning, fills a bath, heats the water, and proceeds to enjoy the fact that he is clean without freezing for it. By the time he’s done, the elves have absconded with all of his clothes except for his last pair of clean breeches and a shirt.

The only empty wall space in the sitting room is above the fireplace. Salazar thinks it a fitting location as he reassembles the wooden frame with practiced ease. He resets the canvas and then places the reconstructed portrait on the wall with a good sticking charm. There are other magical paintings in this keep, after all, and he won’t deny this portrait the chance to wander when the opportunity has been provided.

“And there is the man who is stuck in exile while in exile,” Nizar’s portrait greets him, looking far too happy with this state of affairs. “Where the fuck are we?”

It’s been too long since he’s spoken to the portrait; it takes him a moment to recall what the word _fuck_ means. “Normandy. Queen Eleanor used to own the estate, but it was definitely run by magical hands before that time. You do not need to be so happy about this.”

The portrait snorts in amusement. “I’m seeing it as a forced period of idleness for an idiot who has forgotten the meaning of the word.”

“I have not.”

“You haven’t stopped moving or conniving since you left the school, _idiota_ ,” Nizar retorts. “And before you deny it, do let me remind you that being stored in a stupid pouch means that yes, I’m aware of what you’re up to all the time. You haven’t taken a rest in actual centuries. You should write a nice thank-you letter to those young royal idiots.”

“I should be thanked for the death threats, then?” Salazar asks.

“As if that has ever stopped you.”

“No. I suppose it hasn’t,” Salazar admits, sitting down on the chair he slept in yesterday afternoon.

“And now you’ve decided to be sad. Cheer up, Sal. At least this time no one shot you in the face.”

Salazar winces. “Please stop reminding me of that.” He hadn’t actually needed to know what it felt like to pry a crossbow bolt’s tip from the inside of his own skull.

He doesn’t realize Nizar hasn’t wandered off to explore when the portrait speaks again. “What is it, then?”

“I miss you.”

“How? I live in your pocket,” Nizar says.

“Oh, I rarely have the chance to miss your chatter. I meant…” Salazar hesitates. “You.”

“Ah.” Nizar gives him a searching look. “You know, you don’t actually have to stay away from Hogewáþ for a thousand years. There is nothing stopping you from returning. Well, aside from needing to wait for an idiot king to die.”

“Except for the fact that your history insists I do not return,” Salazar replies.

“Pfft. I am painted proof that history doesn’t know what it’s talking about,” Nizar says. “Besides, I’m not telling you to shout your name from the battlements. You don’t have to tell anyone. Just go back, assure yourself that things are fine, and wander off into the wild again.”

It’s such a tempting idea. Salazar would love to do exactly that…and that’s why he cannot. “I can’t chance it, Nizar, and not only for the fact that I worry I’d be unable to leave a second time. It doesn’t—it feels as if it would be a very bad idea.”

“Fair enough, but you’re only allowed one hour a day to mope like a sodden idiot. I’m not above convincing the elves in this house to drag you about in order to prevent it.”

“You know that there are elves here?” Salazar asks in surprise. “You’ve not seen them yet.”

Nizar’s portrait taps his ear. “I heard the conversation when you spoke to them yesterday, Sal. I can also hear them through the other portrait frames in the keep. Now get your arse out of that chair and go find something to do that isn’t dwelling on things you can’t change.”

“I promised her, Nizar. I don’t like breaking such a promise.”

“And I imagine Berenguela knows that it was not your fault, Sal.”

Salazar isn’t certain of that. “If I hadn’t spoken to Ferdinand that way—”

“Now you’re really reaching for excuses, aren’t you? The blowhard would have found another way to exile you from Castile, Salazar. This was just the first convenient reason.”


	2. Ducey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blanche of Castile knows better than to let Salazar fend for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same glorious beta credit: @norcumi, @sanerontheinside, @mrsstanley, & @jabberwockypie!

Salazar does his best to take his brother’s advice. The portrait might have been painted when Nizar was seventeen, and it exemplifies several of Nizar’s charming youthful mannerisms, but his brother made certain it was updated in that final horrific week of October in 1017.

He knows the portrait is correct. Indulging in what Nizar still refers to as “depression” will help nothing, least of all himself.

He spends time with the elves, learning the keep inside and out. The elves are doing an excellent job with its upkeep, but some things they ask him to correct to make certain the keep still responds to human magic as well as their own. It’s an interesting project, teaching a stone dwelling to recognize the touch of both types of magic without considering one lesser. He’d prefer to leave the elves’ magic as the dominant, given that he is a guest in their home, but they insist that it will be equal or it will be nothing at all. So noted, then—Norman elves are snippy and stubborn.

He also learns that the elves _will_ listen to a mere portrait and drag Salazar out of bed if Nizar thinks him to be moping rather than sleeping.

“You bloody cheat!” Salazar shouts when the elves leave him lying in front of the hearth.

“I told you I would.” Nizar laughs when Salazar curses him.

All right. It is a bit funny.

Salazar explores the whole of the grounds, which has part of the river as its boundary. He puts on his brother’s Cloak when he steps beyond those boundaries, walking along the riverbank until he finds a village. It’s small enough to be able to pay the larger politics of the kingdom little mind. He hears Normand spoken with as much frequency as he hears _franceis_. There is even quite the smattering of Breton, proof of their proximity to Brittany.

The English that Salazar overhears doesn’t sound…correct. If it were not for a few similarities in words, Salazar wouldn’t know the language at all.

“Has it really been that long since I’ve been away?” Salazar asks the portrait that evening. “I thought I recognized perhaps one word in ten.”

“Oh. That is probably…” The portrait makes a face. “I don’t recall the name of it. Shoddy history lessons. I just remember that my modern English is only about five hundred years old. Maybe.”

“Oh, so it’s a Middling English, then.”

“That!” Nizar snaps his fingers and points at Salazar. “Not Middling. Middle English.”

“Do I wish to learn this Middle English?”

Nizar shrugs. “I don’t know? No one was speaking it in the 1990s, Sal. Besides, they’re all using bloody _franceis_ at the moment, so who cares?”

“No, I suppose it won’t make much difference,” Salazar murmurs.

“Now what? Talk to me, or I’ll have the elves drag you around by your ankles again.”

Salazar smiles. “I was reminded of the date today by those in the village of Ducey. Happy Birthday, _hermanito_.”

“You must mean the original date, because it most certainly isn’t March.” The portrait sits down on his painted floor and leans against a wall that doesn’t exist, but that never stops Nizar from doing as he wishes in his own painting. “Thirty-first July.”

“Only seven hundred sixty-one years remaining,” Salazar says quietly.

“Only,” Nizar repeats. “You’ll be needing to find a way to spend your time productively, Sal.”

“And what of you?” Salazar asks, annoyed.

“Unlike that interesting 1017 solution of a painting, I’m not a person. I’m a portrait. Things are never dull for me, _hermano_.” Nizar tilts his head. “Whenever Ferdinand does you the courtesy of dying, make certain his son Alfonso remembers you. Then go the fuck home to Ipuzko.”

Salazar narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Because that is home, and it always makes you feel better,” Nizar says. “You mope and whinge less.”

“I don’t even _like_ France,” Salazar mutters.

“See? Moping and whinging. Go make friends in that village, Sal. Talk to a human being who isn’t a portrait. The elves will always be here as willing company, but given that we’ve never encountered an elf-human hybrid, I doubt you can fuck one.”

“NIZAR!”

“Made you think about it!” Nizar laughs at him and flees the portrait frame.

Salazar puts off his return to Ducey for another two weeks out of sheer obstinacy. He does not need human company. He has a keep full of elves, many books to read, and an annoying portrait of his brother.

The books are written in _franceis_ , but their contents are fascinating. The Normans came about as a mingling of the Gauls with the Norse, and it shows in the way they think about magic. The philosophy is not as wildly different as that of the Picts or the Britons, who held their traditions longer than most, but the magic is still distinctly itself.

“If you don’t leave this keep today, I’m going to ask the elves to hang you up by your ankles in the middle of the night after you fall asleep. From a tree.”

Salazar glares at Nizar’s portrait as he grabs a cloak meant for the chill of autumn. “I’m actually on my way there.”

“Good.” Nizar gazes at him from where he is hanging from his own ceiling. How he does so, Salazar has no idea. “Try not to convince anyone you need to be burnt at the stake today.”

“Please go attempt to mate with a turnip.”

Ducey is ancient Roman mortar and stone combined with new construction of stone and wood. Salazar can see this village easily continuing to grow. It will live and thrive if the English and the French don’t muck it up for all involved.

Salazar steps around the leavings from a horse and skirts a suspect puddle. He wishes, again, that magicians were still a common sight. The village would be far cleaner.

The Langlois Tavern is celebrating the first new guests it’s seen in a fortnight when Salazar arrives to ask about their dinner plans. The elves supply him with everything he needs, but Nizar is right—Salazar needs people. He misses their company, their fears and deeds, their stories and laughter. He hasn’t had any sort of true companionship with another since Berenguela departed Castile.

Salazar has also missed spending time among people who are not nobility. The balance between men and women changed so quickly in those circles. Women are barely respected unless another man in power reminds them to do so.

Those who are not of noble blood are holding true to the thoughts of old. That balance is slowly slipping here as well—Salazar can see it—but not with the same speed. Women are still respected for their words, their craft, and their wisdom. It feels like breathing in clean air to experience it again.

“And who might you be, good sir?” the youngest of the three new guests asks him in _franceis_. All three speak the language decently enough, but there is an accent within their words that makes Salazar suspect the young travelers are English.

“Salazar of Ipuzko,” he says, a name that should not attract much attention. There are many who bear that family name in his father’s homeland. “I live to the north outside the village. What brings you to Ducey?”

“We’re traveling, my brothers and I,” the young man says. “We’re hoping to see the whole of France before moving onward to Rome.”

Salazar glances from one face to the other. All have pale skin, but the youngest, the most talkative, is dark-haired and green-eyed, with a delicate nose and chin. The next eldest has straw-colored hair and ruddy features, but incredible jewel-blue eyes that Salazar finds unnerving for reasons he can’t explain. The eldest is dark-haired and dark-eyed, with an interesting hatchet of a nose that speaks of it being broken more than once. There is still a resemblance in physical features among them, though their bearing is not similar at all.

“If it’s safe,” the straw-haired man says. Salazar wonders if his expression is always so dour, or if he’s suffered a loss that still haunts him. “The Crusades, you know.”

“France is safe enough as long as…” Salazar pointedly stares at the tip of a wand just emerging from the youngest one’s sleeve. “You should be keeping that to yourself.”

“Oh, the Ducey people don’t mind. They still remember one of their magical lords kindly enough. Don’t you, Laurent?”

The tavern keep, Laurent Langlois, glances up from pouring a full goblet of ale for a farmer of the village. “That we do. Granted, you’d best not be spreading that around elsewhere. We keep our secrets, young Peverell.”

“Mother’s honor, I won’t tell a soul,” young Peverell promises.

“Are there other magicians in the village?” Salazar asks, trying to resist the urge to back away and run for his life. Excellent; a pair of royal idiots have made him paranoid.

“Oh, we have a few. They maintain their silence and their secrets, doing their best to keep everyone out of trouble,” Laurent says. “They tend to be in the tavern most often on Friday evenings. Why the interest, Salazar?”

“I’m interested because of late, I’ve only ever been safe when I am on Iberia’s northernmost shore,” Salazar replies. “I didn’t know there were any havens left.”

Laurent nods his understanding. “Beauxbatons will be another such place, likely by next year—or so young Meraud tells me. He and his sister Analis are both to go, which is a relief to their parents. Neither have magic, so those two have been a handful.”

“The young ones usually are.” Salazar’s voice catches. “Excuse me. I have business to attend to.”

Salazar is on the outskirts of the village when he hears someone yell his name. He sighs and turns around to discover the youngest Peverell lad running to catch up to him. Then he spends a few minutes leaning over the nearest fence, trying not to sick up what he’s just eaten.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Salazar asks, forcing himself to politeness when he’d rather depart.

“It’s just—you look terribly familiar, Salazar of Ipuzko. Wait, I’m being rude.” The young man holds out his hand. “Ignotus Peverell.”

Salazar accepts the man’s hand, feeling a strong sense of magic against his skin. “I do speak truly when I say it’s nice to see another magician. It’s been a while since I’ve met any who were not of my own family.”

“It does get difficult sometimes,” Ignotus says. “I’m sure you’re aware of that, Salazar Slytherin.”

Salazar glares at him. “I don’t know that name.”

Ignotus shrugs. “All right. Not a word out of me, then. My brothers didn’t notice your resemblance to certain portraits, either. It is nice to know you aren’t dead, sir. You age rather well, too.”

He hasn’t aged a day since 1043. “I’m of a long-lived bloodline. Should you not be getting back to your brothers?”

Please go back. He wants no reminders of the past, not right now.

“Oh, they’re fine. Well, Antioch is probably making an arse of himself, but that’s nothing new,” Ignotus says, cheerfully ignoring Salazar’s hints. “I still don’t understand why he was a Ravenclaw.”

Ravenclaw. “You schooled at Hogewáþ.”

Ignotus nods. “All of us did. Gryffindor for me, Ravenclaw for Antioch, and Slytherin for Cadmus. Antioch finished his schooling first. Cadmus completed Hogewáþ at the end of 1232. They both waited for me to finish my apprenticeship, but it took a bit longer than expected. We went south to England, stopped at home for a bit in Godric’s Hollow, and then leapt aboard the first boat to sail south out of the port of Bristol, ready to see the rest of the world.”

Salazar swallows. “I was not actually expecting to greet any student from those halls.”

“I didn’t expect so, not with the manner in which you departed,” Ignotus says.

“The manner of my departure?” Salazar repeats, feeling foolish.

“Well, yes.” Ignotus gives him a curious look. “There was that infamous fight with Godric Gryffindor. Everyone knows.”

Oh. Only that. Salazar releases a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “It was not the sort of disagreement that ends a friendship of long years, young Peverell. My reasons for departing the school are my own.”

Ignotus still seems curious. “Hmm. Maybe it’s been conflated over the years, then. That isn’t the current tale, but no matter! I’m very glad to meet you, sir.”

“And I’m…glad to meet you,” Salazar manages to say. “I don’t think—I—there is a painting in the Slytherin Sitting Room. Above the fireplace.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve seen the painting of your brother. Quite the sharp-tongued man. I rather liked him, though Cadmus whined bitterly about unfair assumptions in that regard. I’m very sorry for your loss, sir.”

“More than one loss.” Salazar hesitates. “Will you be staying in Ducey for long?”

“It’s looking to be through the winter, actually. The locals are predicting early snow, and Cadmus is sick of it after we spent so much time in the Highlands. I tried to convince him that we would see less snow if we travel south now, but he’s a stubborn goat of a man. Of course, he may be thinking of practicality. My _franceis_ is all right, but Antioch and Cadmus both still struggle at times, especially since…” Ignotus’s good humor diminishes somewhat. “Cadmus was betrothed. He was supposed to marry her this past spring, but she…she died. Accident. Ducey is so different from everything we’ve known that it’s been a good way to distract him from grief.”

Salazar nods. He’d thought the middle sibling seemed dour. At least now he knows why. “Please inform your brother that I am sorry for his betrothed’s unfortunate passing. I was not lying about having business to attend to. I will be seeing you again, young Peverell.”

“Oh, it’s just Ignotus,” the young man protests, his cheer restored. “I look forward to it, Salazar who is not Slytherin.”

“Cheek. Off with you,” Salazar replies. Only when Ignotus is walking back towards the village does Salazar realize his teaching voice slipped into the conversation. No, he does not wish to walk back any longer. He ducks behind a building and uses Desplazarse to return to the estate.

“Three students from Hogewáþ. That’s excellent!” Nizar says that evening when he returns to the portrait frame in Salazar’s sitting room. “And…you’re not happy about it.”

Salazar shakes his head. “No.” For the first time in quite a while, he feels the three objects stored in his belt pouch as if they’re creating a great weight, one that presses on his shoulders even as it drags him down.

“Oh. I see.” Nizar sits down and wraps his arms around his knees. “You believe it’s them. You think they’re the mysterious three you’re meant to find.”

“I do. I’d rather they were not.”

“You don’t know what’s meant to happen,” Nizar says. “Neither do I. What they choose to take, and how they choose to use those items? That is up to them, Sal.”

“I’m glad you can be so confident about this. It isn’t you who will be handing off three objects that may well see these young magicians dead.” He has no personal feelings in regards to Cadmus or Antioch yet, who are both attempting to maintain their distance, but Ignotus is a warm, personable sort who spills words as easily as a leaky bucket spills water.

“You still don’t know that.”

Salazar scrubs at his hair and smiles. “I’m a Seer, _idiota_. Of course I know it.”

“And the Seer should remember that the future likes to wander from one place to another,” Nizar replies.

“Yes.” Salazar accepts a warm infusion of herbs and honey from the elf Fallis and thanks her. “They say they’re from Godric’s Hollow. I’d not realized the name of Godric’s home would change so swiftly.”

Nizar’s portrait seems bemused by that. “Godric’s Hollow and a Cloak as a family heirloom. One of those three is an ancestor of mine. Thus, you know that at least one of them lives long enough to father children.”

Salazar glares at him. “And now I’m to deal with the fear that I’m mucking up your life. Thank you very much for that, _hermanito_.”

Nizar smiles. “Time is a circle. I suspect you’ll be doing the complete opposite, Sal.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

The transition from summer to autumn to winter is so swift it’s as if autumn never happens at all. The trees are holding onto red, yellow, and golden leaves when the first snow comes along like an icy gale, leaving the farmers struggling to retrieve the late crops of [rædic](about), guisantes, and gourds that remained in the fields.

Salazar can bear it only for a few hours before he retreats to the keep and asks the elves to discreetly collect all that can be salvaged and leave it in the tavern after the last patrons go to bed. A light charm from Salazar’s wand ensures there will be equal distribution for everyone. Any who try to steal from their neighbors will receive a burnt hand for their efforts.

There is a cheer the following day from those who find the rescued bounty in the inn. Prayers are offered, and no one says a word about magic at all.

The early snow also ensnares magicians who’d intended to travel on to the new Beauxbatons, meant to open its doors in the spring. Without landmarks, travelers have to rely on the directions sent to them by birds homing in on their sense of magic; for many, that makes it a very long journey. Salazar received one of the scrolls himself, memorized the directions, and carefully packed it away under a Preservation Charm. He might need to visit the new school one day, and it would be nice to have proof that he was once invited to do so.

Ignotus asks Salazar to tell them stories during the long cold evenings. He convinces his brothers and the young ones awaiting the journey to Beauxbatons to join them. Salazar shrugs and uses the excuse to tell stories that are all thinly disguised bits of magical teaching. Never once does Ignotus breathe a word of Salazar’s true identity, nicknaming him Saul after the Apostle.

“ _Sha’ul_. Not Saul,” Salazar corrects him. “The Church is very bad at translating Hebrew. I do remind you all that my given name works just as well.”

“What about Peter, then?” little Esther asks, gazing up at him with rapt blue eyes. “They call him Simon Peter, Saul.”

Ignotus is a terrible influence. “Simon, not Peter, though it is properly _Shim’on_. Christ did not name him Peter, but _Kephas_. That is where the tale of Simon being a rock comes from,” Salazar explains, trying to figure out when in his life it became necessary to teach Christians about their own religion.

He complains to Nizar, which is a terrible blunder. Nizar just laughs and offers to repeat Godric’s lectures to be certain that Salazar is educating them correctly.

Salazar rolls his eyes. “ _Hermanito_ , I was navigating such minefields before you were born.”

Antioch quickly gets bored of being trapped indoors with yet another snowfall and makes the mistake of challenging Salazar to a duel. Salazar follows the young idiot to one of the emptied fields beyond the village and lands Antioch in the snow with two spells before Antioch can raise his wand.

“You didn’t—that isn’t dueling! You’re meant to bow first!” Antioch bleats from the snow. Ignotus is standing out of the way, laughing so hard he might soon be ill. Even dour Cadmus is smiling.

“Who says that?” Salazar asks Antioch, taking pity on the young man to haul him up from the ground. Antioch handles it with bad grace, offering Salazar a grudging thank-you.

“It’s…that’s how dueling is taught. You don’t _sneak_ attack,” Antioch mutters.

“Ah. You’ve been taught Court dueling, but nothing else?” _Nizar must be having such a fit about that lapse._ “There is no such thing as bowing to your enemy on a battlefield, Antioch Peverell. You either survive, or you die.”

“I’ve been trying to tell him that,” Cadmus says, startling him. The man speaks so little that it’s surprising to hear his voice. “Even the portraits of the previous Defence Masters would say that. It’s the new Defence teacher who is all set on everything being courtly. It’s nonsense.”

“It isn’t entirely nonsense. It’s useful in a true Court, where you may not want to kill your opponent or risk ill feelings. But to challenge someone outside of those boundaries is to say that you expect no mercy, nor will you grant it.”

Cadmus nods. “Can we go back inside now?” he asks, glancing at his older brother. “If you’re done waving both of your wands about.” Antioch glowers at him before stomping back in the direction of the tavern.

“Is that a problem very often?” Salazar asks Ignotus when he finally stops laughing.

“I think he was born with the difficulty, Saul,” Ignotus says. “Ravenclaw’s House was glad to see the back of him when he finished his apprenticeship.”

“And what of Gryffindor’s House and yourself?”

Ignotus frowns. “To be honest, I’m still not certain why the Hat chose Gryffindor. I’m not terribly brave, or of much use in a pitched battle. Lost more duels than I won. I prefer stories more than I do spellwork, though I’m decent enough with a good charm. I enjoy making things, but that’s not always useful.”

“Perhaps you’ve still yet to find your path. You’re only seventeen, Ignotus. You have time to choose it still.” Salazar hopes he isn’t lying. He knows it is these three. He knows Fate is standing at his shoulder, waiting for the right moment, and running for the hills isn’t an option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter following the first is thanks to the fact that 1) it is nearly Friday, and 2) the Fundraisening broke another milestone that means myself and the family have a roof over our heads for another month while the mate's job hunt continues. See my Tumblr for details and other Things.


	3. Meant to Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _During a fell winter, brothers three will cross paths with thee_   
>  _Meant to die, and still they will live_   
>  _One more chance they will have before each meets their end.  
> _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First: Betas are awesome: @norcumi, @sanerontheinside, @mrsstanley, & @jabberwockypie
> 
> Second: Thank you. All of you. <3

Every day when Salazar looks for the three brothers in the water filling the silver bowl, their fates are different. He’s never seen such rapid changes before, and spends quite a bit of time wondering why.

“They’re fated to carry three objects not of this Earth,” Nizar says when Salazar is complaining aloud over the silver bowl. “It’s a wonder you can see anything of them at all. You might not be able to scry reliably on their doings until after this bargain of yours is fulfilled.”

That doesn’t make him feel any better. He takes to wearing his brother’s Invisibility Cloak on his walks to Ducey, wanting the peace it offers. Even his footsteps are vanished by the tail of the cloak gliding over the snow, which grows thicker as the ice collects along the banks of the Sélune.

There is one other magician present in Ducey aside from the three Peverells who schooled at Hogewáþ. The fourth is a young woman named Mary who has been asked to begin teaching at Beauxbatons in the spring. Mary is the only one of the four whose apprenticeship feels completed, served in the House of Hugðilepuf. She is a good crafter of magical wards, but it is driving Salazar to distraction at the way they all keep mauling Helga’s chosen name into _Hufflepuff_.

“Hufflepuff.” Nizar’s portrait sighs when Salazar repeats the offending word to him. “Yes. You might as well come to terms with it now, Sal.”

“Absolutely not,” Salazar growls. He is not going to dishonor his friend that way.

Unlike Mary, the three brothers have a solid education in basic magic, but their apprenticeships do not seem to be properly done. Antioch apprenticed beneath a magician named Henry for Defence, but Antioch seems far more interested in offence and fighting than protecting others. He has a fierce temper that is most often quelled by Cadmus or Ignotus, though Salazar quickly discovers it best to render the man unconscious if he drinks too much in the evening. Cadmus seems interested only in the ways of plants and Alchemy, a combination that baffles Salazar. Ignotus served an apprenticeship for Charms, and yet his skill is not refined.

Salazar receives news of Castile through Blanche’s messenger birds. Ferdinand and his allies have not only retained their hold on the cities of Badojoz, Mérida, Cazorla, and Úbeda, but Ferdinand himself confessed to Blanche that his next goal is to reconquer the former Umayyad capital of Córdoba.

He can barely comprehend the idea. To see Córdoba returned to the northern kingdoms means more to him than all the others. It’s a loss from the time of his father, a fond memory of the peace that tentatively held during his childhood. The idea of being able to walk its streets again without fear is astounding.

He doesn’t receive word of what he most wants to hear until December, when Blanche’s spies and agents who work throughout Europe finally return to confirm it. Marie of Brienne was married by contract and the Church to Baldwin II in the summer of the year. They’re recognized in Constantinople and by the Church of Rome as junior reigning Empress and Emperor. Marie’s parents, John of Brienne and Berenguela of León, are ruling Constantinople as recognized Emperor and Empress Consort, titles that will last until their deaths.

“That’s quite a bit more than you bargained for, I imagine,” Salazar murmurs of Berenguela. He hopes her mother is proud. To be honest, he hopes her mother looks up from her work to support Ferdinand and remembers that she has a younger child, and that youngest child and her grandchild are now two of the most powerful people in the Eastern Empire.

It’s Marie who holds much of Salazar’s sympathy. No child of nine should be crowned as an Empress. Only the blood oath he extracted from John reassures Salazar—Baldwin will be warned not to lay a hand on her until Marie is at least fourteen years old and able to approach him first, with full knowledge of what it will mean to do so. Salazar is not above killing an Emperor if he ever discovers it to be otherwise.

 

*          *          *          *

 

The village of Ducey crowds into the tavern to say farewell to the old year and await the new. Salazar has enough training in Arithmancy to be glad when midnight brings forth 1235, and thus the year is no longer in numerical succession. The entirety of 1234 felt unbearably tense.

It’s a tension that doesn’t depart on first January. “Is that really too much to ask?” Salazar mutters when he awakens late that morning.

“Hallows,” Nizar reminds him, reading a book he stole from a monk’s portrait. The monk hasn’t stopped cursing in Latin since the theft occurred three days ago. It hasn’t yet occurred to the other portrait to attempt to steal it back.

“I know!”

His brother’s Cloak is a welcome layer of extra warmth as Salazar makes his first trip back to the village since the turn of the year. The river cracks and groans as he walks along its shore. Beneath the ice, the water is still swirling, angry that its flow to the ocean is impeded by frost. It’s the sort of water that the Highland folk would say is waiting to steal lives.

“Oh, hurry up!” Salazar hears Antioch shout, his voice an echo in the still and quiet air. “We just need to cross the bridge so we can go back to the tavern!”

“Antioch—they did warn us. Not that bridge.” That would be Ignotus.

“If only they didn’t have wards against magical travel guarding the town,” Cadmus sighs.

Wards? What wards?

Salazar makes it through the trees and understands at once what will happen. There are no wards guarding the village, but there are wards meant to keep others away from this bridge. It’s old and crumbling stone, younger than the old Roman Empire and thus not built to last. The magical wards meant to keep others from stepping foot on it must have weakened during the winter.

_During a fell winter, brothers three will cross paths with thee_

He breaks into a run, the sound of it hidden by crackling ice.

_Meant to die, and still they will live_

“Antioch!” Cadmus sounds terrified. “The bridge is collapsing!”

_One more chance they will have before each meets their end_

He may well despise riddles after this day is through.

Salazar watches, heart in his throat, as Antioch plunges into the water to his waist before Cadmus grasps him with one hand. It’s Ignotus who looks beyond that immediate danger and freezes the remaining stones beneath their feet, leaving only a sparse handful of them in the air. Cadmus hauls Antioch out of the river, tosses him over one shoulder, and leaps from stone to stone until they’re on the opposite shore.

Salazar realizes too late that Ignotus can only hold the spell for so long. He muffles his shout with his fist when Ignotus falls with the remaining stones, disappearing through broken ice into the river.

Antioch’s long-standing grace, the reason for Salazar’s patience, is that he truly loves his brothers. The moment he hears a body strike the water, he whirls around, horrified. “IGNOTUS!”

A nonverbal spell from Antioch’s wand yanks the youngest sibling from the water. Cadmus catches Ignotus when Antioch drops him on their side of the river. “Ignotus? Please speak to me!” he begs.

Ignotus coughs out a mouthful of water and fills the air with swearing that belittles the bridge’s parentage. “S-fr-freezing. T-told y-you. N-not. Th-that. B-bridge!”

“Do y-you always h-have to complain a-about my stupidit-ty?” Antioch lifts his wand and drops it without casting a spell. “Cadmus, please.”

Cadmus pats his sleeves and his eyes widen. “Give me your wand. Mine is gone.”

“Gone? Wh-why?” Antioch asks, but passes over his oak wand without complaint.

The Warming Charms that Cadmus casts are well done, but he neglects the drying charm that would make the process more comfortable for his sopping wet brothers. “I don’t know. I must have lost it from my sleeve when I grabbed your arm. The river owns it now.”

“W-well. Y-you k-eep m-mine,” Antioch says while they both try to support Ignotus. “You f-finished s-saving our l-lives. I’ll f-find a-another.”

Salazar retrieves his wand and finds the bridge wards collapsing. Without anything to guard, they no longer bar the way. He wraps his brother’s Cloak around himself and uses Desplazarse to travel to the other side of the river.

“What was that?” Cadmus asks. “I heard something!”

“Sounds l-like-cl-cloth,” Ignotus chatters.

Salazar would rather do anything else, but Nizar is right. Whatever these three choose after the task is done is not of his making. He can only hope their recent brush with death creates wisdom instead of foolishness.

He touches his wand to his throat with the memory of an Aspect’s words in his thoughts.

“YOU WERE ALL MEANT TO DIE.” It is the Aspect’s wind-whipped, unforgiving voice that fills the air. The charm captures the sound of it very well, and will probably drive Salazar to nightmares tonight.

He has never seen three men pale so quickly. “Oh, God,” Cadmus whispers.

“GOD YOU MIGHT HAVE SEEN. INSTEAD YOU WILL SEE ME.”

“D-Death?” Ignotus glances at the river. “Did we actually…did we r-really survive th-that?”

“Of course we did!” Antioch insists. “It’s just—”

“YOU WERE ALL MEANT TO DIE,” Salazar repeats, knowing he has their attention. “WHY SHOULD YOU REMAIN WHEN YOUR FATE IS CLEAR?”

Cadmus and Antioch glance at each other. To his surprise, it’s Cadmus who says, “Because…because we bested you.”

“We bested a _bridge_ ,” Ignotus mutters.

“We still survived. We didn’t die.” Antioch narrows his eyes. “In the old tales, those who bested Death were granted a boon.”

If he wasn’t certain before, that makes it clear beyond all doubt. Young idiot. Greedy young idiot. “VERY WELL. IGNOTUS PEVERELL, WHAT IS IT YOU WISH FOR?”

Antioch scowls. “By tradition, it should be the eldest first.”

Salazar chooses to stare at him. The only sounds are that of harsh breaths, chattering teeth, and the wind snatching at the Cloak he wears. Antioch takes a step back and all but cowers behind Cadmus.

“I—I don’t n-need a b-boon,” Ignotus says, ignoring the fact that his wet hair is beginning to freeze.

 _And I’d rather not give it._ “YOUR BROTHER INVOKED THE TRADITION. ASK.”

“Uh…I…” Ignotus shakes his head, as if to clear his thoughts. “I know those stories better than Antioch. I could ask for something, and there is no guarantee you’d not turn around and trick me to my death just afterwards.”

“THAT IS TRUE.” This is why Ignotus was not a Ravenclaw. Godric was their sly Lore-Keeper.

“Then—is there a c-cloak like y-yours, one th-that will hide me from y-your sight? Until I’m r-ready and d-done with th-the world?” Ignotus asks. His teeth are still chattering as Cadmus’s Warming Charm competes with snow and ice.

“You want a cloak. You could have anything you want, and you’re asking for a _cloak_ ,” Cadmus says in disbelief.

“THE BOON IS GRANTED, IGNOTUS PEVERELL.” When Ignotus, his teeth still chattering, holds out his dripping arms, Salazar places the carefully folded Cloak, twin to the one he wears, into Ignotus’s waiting hands.

“Oh. Those patterns—they’re beautiful.” Ignotus crushes the Cloak against his chest. “Do I thank you?”

“NO.” Salazar looks at Cadmus. “CADMUS PEVERELL, WHAT IS IT YOU WISH FOR?”

“I—I don’t—” Cadmus suddenly straightens. “I want to see her again. I want Hilda back.”

Sarding. Idiot. “THOSE WHO ARE LONG DEAD CANNOT RETURN TO THE LIFE THEY LIVED.”

“Then…” Cadmus bites his lip. “Then grant me the means to speak to her. I—I’d like to know that she is well.”

“THE BOON IS GRANTED, CADMUS PEVERELL.” He charms the dark stone to float over and allows it to drop into Cadmus’s waiting hands.

Cadmus holds up the small stone, marked by the symbol of the three Hallows. “How?”

“YOU ASKED FOR A BOON. YOU DID NOT ASK HOW IT IS USED. ANTIOCH PEVERELL, WHAT IS IT YOU WISH FOR?”

“We nearly died. I gave my brother my wand for saving our lives.” Antioch stares down at the ground. “I need another. I—I want a wand that cannot be defeated. I never want to be weak again!”

 _Then you did not learn the lesson I tried to teach you._ Salazar holds out the long wand with its elderberry carvings, handle first. He doesn’t know if undefeatable is one of the wand’s traits, but there is no doubt at all that it’s powerful.

“THE BOON IS GRANTED, ANTIOCH PEVERELL.”

Antioch reaches out with one shaking hand and accepts the wand that appears to be floating in the air. The moment his hand closes around its handle, his eyes light up. “Oh. Oh, that is wonderful!”

Ignotus has already wrapped himself in the Cloak. His teeth have stopped chattering, and his skin has a healthy color rather than bloodless and half-frozen. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that only his head and hands are visible. “Thank you for your boon,” he says, the only one of the three brothers to insist upon good manners. Cadmus is distracted, trying to determine how the stone works. Antioch is busy slaughtering a tree with fierce nonverbal spells.

“USE IT WISELY.” Salazar Disapparates, taking the feel of his presence with him. He ends the charm on his throat, relieved when a whisper from his mouth emerges in his own voice. He’d much prefer not to be stuck with that.

Salazar still has no idea what any of them will do, but he is well aware of who he’ll need to watch. Antioch’s eyes have taken on a gleam that makes him resemble a man possessed by the otherworldly. Salazar never felt any such thing from the wand, but then, he never claimed it as his own.

The three brothers return to the tavern in good spirits. Salazar follows along behind them, a silent, unknown shadow. Cadmus and Antioch brag of besting Death to everyone in the room. Ignotus is the one who thinks to tell the tavern keep of the destroyed bridge. Laurent is trying not to stare at the man, who is largely invisible, until Ignotus remembers to remove it and explain that it’s a simple invisibility cloak he’s wearing, one helping to warm him after an unwanted plunge through the ice.

“The ice?” Laurent’s wife Marisa comes rushing over and shoves Ignotus in the direction of the tavern’s great stone hearth. “You poor lamb!”

“I’m fine,” Ignotus protests, but it’s far too late. Marisa has him in her clutches, and is not likely to be letting go until she’s satisfied Ignotus is in no danger of dying.

Cadmus takes a seat at the table closest to Ignotus, still frowning at the stone while Antioch continues telling anyone who comes downstairs or enters the door that they bested Death. “But how does it work?” Cadmus mutters under his breath. Ignotus shrugs in response before he has a steaming tankard shoved into his hands. Marisa stands over him, hands on her hips, and orders her lamb to _drink it now_.

Antioch waits until evening, tapping his wand against his arm, before he turns and exits the tavern. Salazar takes a steadying breath and follows him. That mad gleam has never left the eldest brother’s eyes.

Outside, Antioch finds one of the magicians he’s been quarreling with since the other man’s arrival. Neither has ever issued challenge, Antioch out of fear of the older magician’s prowess, and Peter because he has no desire to slaughter a fool. Salazar told Peter he should duel Antioch to a defeat, not a death, but Peter insisted it wasn’t necessary.

This time, there is no hesitation. Antioch slaps Peter across the face with his new wand, the utmost insult that can be given in magical circles without simply grasping and breaking the other’s wand. “I’ve tolerated your rude tongue for long enough!” Antioch declares.

Peter’s eyes flash in anger. “If you seek rude tongues, you have only to look in the mirror. Your foolish challenge is accepted, Peverell.”

Salazar rolls his eyes. Antioch has finally stirred Peter’s temper, and now he’ll be witnessing the duel of two utter idiots.

They walk out to the same field where Salazar blasted the eldest Peverell onto his backside months previous. Peter draws his wand, does not bow, and shows no mercy—but Antioch does the same. They trade blows for a few minutes, with Antioch capable of evading or blocking every spell Peter casts.

“Is that the best you can do?” Peter asks, laughing.

Salazar flinches when the green light of the Killing Curse strikes Peter in the chest. He is dead before his body drops into the snow.

He removes his brother’s Cloak and stuffs it into his belt pouch. “You do recall that death is not the point to a duel, yes?”

Antioch spins in place, wand raised. Salazar drops face-first to the ground to avoid the green light passing through the place he was just standing.

The stupid fool may not need to worry about another slaying him. Salazar is now contemplating the idea himself. He lifts his head from the snow and asks, “Is there any particular reason why you just attempted to murder me?”

“I—” Antioch blinks a few times. “My apologies. You startled me.”

Salazar gets up and brushes the snow from his clothes. “Go back to the tavern, Antioch Peverell. You need to inform the village that they’ve a dead man to bury.”

“Yes. I’ll do that,” Antioch agrees, his face falling into shadow as the last rays of the sun disappear behind the tree line.

He reaches out and grabs Antioch by the shoulder when the man tries to pass by. “Pay for his service and burial,” Salazar orders. “And do not insult the dead by withholding coin.”

“Let go of me!” Antioch shouts, slashing his wand through the air.

At first, Salazar is only aware of a sharp, stinging sensation. Then he feels warmth where it should not be.

Salazar glances down to find his heavy winter cloak, tunic, and shirt sliced through—and so is his chest. The gouge is deep enough to reveal the broken edges of bone as his blood tries to escape all at once.

The sight of the wound breaks through his shock. Salazar’s knees give out before he falls backwards into the snow. The air leaves his lungs in a rush, and with it gone he can taste blood.

Shit. Not this again.

Antioch stares at him before his face twists in fear. Then he runs.

Cowardly idiot. Complete fool. Stupid sarding wand.

Salazar rolls over and crawls out of the field, aware that he is leaving a wide trail of blood that even a blind man might follow. He points his wand at the snow and obliterates half the trail while he can still cast a spell, then yanks the Cloak back out. He wraps himself in its welcome folds just as the first villagers come running, led by Laurent. Cadmus and Ignotus are with them. Surprisingly, so is Antioch.

“Why did you attack Saul?” Ignotus is shouting at his brother.

Antioch is gripping the elderberry wand in his hand, refusing to meet Ignotus’s eyes. “He attacked me first! He was going to kill me!”

“It’s _Saul_!” Ignotus yells in response. “He could have killed you months ago for stupidity, and you already admitted that you killed Peter!”

“We were dueling,” Antioch mutters, shifting back and forth on his feet.

“That is quite a bit of blood.” Laurent raises a lantern to get a better look at the snow. “And the trail ends in a mess.”

“If Saul tried to magically travel…” Cadmus looks ill. “He could have made it worse.”

“Then we’ll search for him.” Laurent claps Cadmus on the back. “You’re the only one among your brothers that didn’t take a bath in the river today. Help us search.”

Cadmus nods, though his hand is resting on a belt pouch that no doubt holds a small, dark stone. “I will.”

“So will I.” Ignotus ignores the others’ protests. “I’ll be fine. This invisibility cloak is quite warm enough.”

Antioch’s response is to turn and walk back to the tavern. Cadmus doesn’t notice, but Ignotus’s expression is marked by intense disappointment as he watches his brother leave.

Salazar is lightheaded and nauseous as the searchers spread out beyond the field’s confines. He cannot be found. This is a lethal injury. There will be too many questions asked when he refuses to die from it, even in a haven like Ducey. He must chance Desplazarse and hope he doesn’t do as Cadmus fears.

He tightens his hold on the Cloak, fighting to remain conscious. He has to succeed. He has no choice. He can’t spend the centuries trapped beneath the earth. He has to be waiting.

Less than seven hundred sixty-one years remain.

Salazar doesn’t remember the Desplazarse. He only realizes he’s succeeded when he discovers the stone floor of the keep’s sitting room beneath his hands.

“Sal?” Nizar’s voice suddenly rises in pitch. “SALAZAR!”

“Stop screeching at me. I can’t sarding die,” Salazar gasps at the portrait, and then blackness steals him away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter brought to you by The Fundraisening! and my absolute gratitude. See my Tumblr for details.


	4. Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three brothers. Three fates. Three deaths. Three turns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @jahaliel is awesome and the reason for another chapter-posting. <3
> 
> Betas also awesome: @sanerontheinside, @mrsstanley, @norcumi, @jabberwockypie

_Oh, bróðir. What a terrible mess you’ve made of yourself_. He feels Helga’s cool hand on his brow and knows he must be dreaming.

_Of course you are, Salazar. But what am I, dearest?_

“Sálgönge Fólk,” he whispers.

 _My weary bróðir._ Helga sings to him in Norse. It eases some broken part of his heart.

Salazar awakens to the feel of a stone on his chest, weightlessness in his limbs, and thoughts that seem hopelessly scattered. He is lying in a bed, not on snow or stone. He can smell herbs in the air that are used to prevent infection, but his skin feels like dried parchment. Fever, then.

Definitely fever, given that there is a dead man at his bedside. Salazar stares at Godric, who looks not as he did in 1039, but when they were all still young—perhaps thirty at most.

Godric holds a finger to his lips and glances towards the end of the bed. Salazar manages to lift his head just enough to see two of the keep’s elves curled up near his feet, obvious in their roles as guardian healers.

Salazar lets his head drop back down and bites back a groan of pain. When he thinks he can breathe again without wanting to scream, he blinks his eyes open again. He’s still in a ghost’s company. “Why?” he rasps.

“I lived as a Door Guardian.” Godric’s voice is so familiar that the ache it creates is worse than the burning weight in his chest. “It’s easiest for me, of all of us, to step out from the veil.”

Salazar has to attempt swallowing several times before he can speak again. “Miss you.”

Godric grips his hand. He feels as solid, as real, as Helga’s earlier touch. “I miss you as well, my friend. We all do.”

He wonders if he is weeping, or if the fever burns the tears away before the can fall. “Mistake.”

“No.” Godric shakes his head, squeezing Salazar’s hand again. “No decision made to safeguard another is a mistake, Salazar. You chose this path out of love, not for any gain—not when the path is so unkind.”

“Tell…?”

“Your family already knows.” Godric releases his hand. “You are not a ghost, Salazar, nor a walking dead man. You still breathe. Do not merely exist. Remember to _live_.”

He sleeps again. Or maybe he doesn’t. Fevers have always been deceptive that way.

 _We are points on the compass, Salazar Deslizarse_ , Rowena’s voice murmurs. _You, the Western point: know that the North, the South, and the East will always be with you_.

The next time he wakes, his thoughts are clear. He no longer feels like his skin might burst into flame, and light streams in through the window of the sleeping chamber. He is being tended to by a different elf than the ones he thinks might have been sleeping on his bed earlier.

“’lo,” he croaks at her. Not that recovered, then.

“Good morning, Salazar Deslizarse,” Chossi says. The silver chains in her ears chime as she lifts a swath of cloths from his chest to exchange a bitter-smelling poultice for a fresh, sweet-smelling one meant to draw out infection. His chest is inflamed, angry reds and violets accompanied by the glorious spread of many colored bruises, but at least he no longer faces a gaping wound.

“Day?”

“It is the twenty-eighth of January,” Chossi replies. “You’ve slept many days, and you spoke with the spirits as you rested.”

“Did I?” Salazar recalls something of the compass points, familiar voices.

“Rest again.” Chossi pulls blankets back up to his chin. “You will be healing for a long time yet.”

Salazar closes his eyes. He hopes he remembers what spirits he dreamt of when he awakens.

 

*          *          *          *

 

It takes Salazar nearly two months to heal from the worst of that wand’s curse, and still he is not fully recovered. Antioch meant to cause his death, and his body does not forgive such things easily.

“You should wait another month,” Nizar says as Salazar walks into the sitting room. He can almost move without pain, but he tires easily.

“I need to know what happened, and I’ll not send an elf into that village when there is still a potential for danger.”

“And what about the danger to you?” Nizar asks caustically. “Or have you already forgotten what that idiot did?”

“My chest still aches. I’ll not be forgetting that.” Salazar lifts his heavy wool cloak from its peg, wrapping it around his shoulders with slow, careful movements that still make him feel winded. Then he puts on his brother’s Cloak for the first time since it saved his life, letting it envelop him from head to toe. “Besides, I will not be walking there, even with the snow melting. Desplazarse. I can handle that, _hermanito_.”

Nizar’s portrait sighs. “Be careful, _idiota_.”

Salazar nods and returns to Ducey’s forest boundary, leaning against a tree when the world decides it needs to spin for a bit. When he can walk without dizziness, he goes through the village and is relieved to find that everyone seems to be wandering about as normal. There is no hint of dark magic in the air, nothing that would tell him that Antioch attempted to perform evils that would mark him as a vile magician. Thank the gods for small favors, then.

He removes his brother’s Cloak in the lee of a building and then returns to the tavern for the first time since the Peverell brothers’ encounter with the frozen Sélune. He is immediately accosted by Marisa, who flings herself into his arms and nearly sends them crashing to the floor.

“Marisa, you wild woman, get off the man!” Laurent moves his wife aside and then subjects Salazar to a crushing embrace. He can’t help it; he lets out a pathetic whimper.

Laurent helps him to sit in a chair when Salazar tries to fall. “If you’re still not healed up, what in the name of our Lord are you doing out and about, Salazar?”

Salazar presses his hand to his chest and tries to breathe. “Needed to know.”

“About Antioch?” Laurent asks, and Salazar nods.

“SAUL!”

Salazar leans away from Ignotus before he can be crushed again. “Ignotus,” he gasps. “No. Hugging.”

“Hugging?” Ignotus looks baffled by the unfamiliar word.

“You can’t embrace the man. He’s still healing. I did it first, and I might have set his recovery back with that mistake!” Laurent tells him.

“Oh.” Ignotus sighs in relief. “I’m just glad you’re alive!”

When Marisa returns with a tankard of steaming spiced ale, Salazar thinks he has enough of his breath back to speak. “I nearly wasn’t.” It isn’t a lie. That slicing curse is the worst wound he’s taken aside from the crossbow incident.

Ignotus sits down at the table with him. “Saul…I do hate to ask. Did you—did you attack my brother?”

Salazar sips at the ale and grimaces. His sense of taste is off, his body still too distressed by the wound to put much effort into other things. “If by attack, you mean that I witnessed the duel and demanded that Antioch pay for Peter’s burial, then I most certainly did.”

“Oh.” Ignotus nods, but he doesn’t look surprised. “He never admitted it, but we all knew after that night that he must have—he did attempt to murder you.”

“Unfortunately.” Salazar makes himself drink about half of the ale before his stomach protests. Off-putting or not, it still warms him, and the ale helps to ease the pain.

“Have you heard any news at all?” Marisa asks.

“None. Those I reside with do not visit Ducey.” Salazar observes the hollowness on Ignotus’s face, signs of grief ever so obvious to those who’ve experienced the same. “What happened?”

“The night Antioch killed Peter and—and tried to kill you, he came back to the tavern while we searched the fields. Our only relief was that we didn’t find your body,” Ignotus says, and then words fail him.

“Antioch drank his fill and bragged to everyone who would listen that he’d come into possession of a wand that made him more powerful than any magician alive.” There is disgust in Laurent’s eyes that he is barely keeping out of his voice. “He went to bed sodden drunk, and to his misfortune, there was someone as bloodthirsty as he in my tavern that night.”

“Someone murdered him.” Ignotus lowers his head. “While he was sleeping. Slit his throat. They took that cursed wand and left Antioch’s body for us to find when we returned after midnight.”

“I am very sorry.” That one is also not a lie. While Salazar is not sorry at all that a man who tried to kill him is dead, he does sympathize with Ignotus and Cadmus for the loss of their brother to apparent madness. Salazar has no idea what sort of wand he was asked to pass on, but he hopes never to see it again.

Laurent catches Marisa’s eyes. “We’ll leave the two of you alone. Salazar, do let me know if you need anything.”

Salazar nods. “I will. Ignotus, please stay.”

Ignotus pauses in the midst of rising before slowly settling back down in his chair. “My family has wronged you terribly. Please forgive me.”

“I am not in the habit of blaming entire families for the mistakes of a single man.” Salazar pushes the pewter tankard at Ignotus. “Drink up and speak with me. You look worse than I do, and I received an excellent glimpse of my own ribs two months ago.”

Ignotus’s head jerks up. “It was that bad?”

“It was.” Salazar loosens his cloak so that he can pull down both tunic and shirt beneath. Ignotus’s green eyes widen as he sees the angry red line that begins at Salazar’s collarbone. It crosses his chest and ends at the bottom of his rib cage. If the slicing curse had more thought behind it, if it had gone any deeper, his heart and lungs would have joined his blood on the snow that evening. When the wound finally heals, Salazar imagines that the scar will follow him for at least a century.

“I’m sorry.”

“I still don’t blame you for what was done by another.” Salazar waits for Ignotus to take a drink. “Where is Cadmus?”

“Oh. He is not well.” Ignotus lets out a bitter laugh. “Do you think it’s possible to be cursed by Death?”

Salazar doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

Ignotus doesn’t seem to notice that Salazar answered his question at all. “Cadmus was given a stone, a magical stone. It took him a while to figure out how to use its magic, but when he did…he calls it a Resurrection Stone. He uses it to call a shade of Hilda back from death, but you can’t bring the dead back to life. She is only a spirit, one that cannot even speak to him. He tortures himself with her presence and ignores his obligation.”

“Obligation?”

That at least seems to catch Ignotus’s attention. “I didn’t even realize Cadmus had been courting anyone, but…but he was. Before that damned stone. He was courting Mary Fausyde. She’s from the north of England. You recall her, yes? She performed her apprenticeship in Hufflepuff at the same time as Antioch. She is pregnant with Cadmus’s child.”

“And he ignores her?” Salazar asks, shocked. Cadmus never seemed inclined towards anything so cruel.

“He thinks only of Hilda. He barely eats. I’m not certain if he sleeps.” Ignotus scowls. “To be honest, Saul, I don’t know if he recalls that Mary exists. I don’t know if he hears me when I tell him he will be a father. I’ve tried stealing the stone away from him, but no matter what I do, it always returns to Cadmus. I bury it. I throw it in the river. I Vanish it. Banish it. Obliterate it with the strongest spells I know. Always he has it in his hand again when I next see him. It’s as cursed as that damned wand!”

“Perhaps it isn’t a curse,” Salazar suggests. “Nothing beyond the curse of ownership, at least.”

“It returns to him because it’s meant to be his, you mean.” Ignotus swallows. “But what of the shade? Is she not a curse to him, as well?”

“I lost both of my wives during my time at Hogewáþ,” Salazar says quietly. “That sort of loss eats at you. To know love and have it slip away from you is the worst sort of pain, greater than any injury. If I were granted the means to see either of them again, I do not know if I would be faring any better than your brother.”

“You understand it better than I, then. I haven’t loved anyone but family. Our parents—I sent word the day after Antioch’s death, but I’ve heard nothing from them. I’d hoped that they would come, that they would help. Would you speak to my brother?” Ignotus asks, tears standing out in his eyes.

Salazar wonders how this man can be seventeen and yet still be so very young. He doesn’t remember any of them hanging onto the remnants of childhood for this long.

He carries no small part of blame for this. “Of course I will.”

Ignotus leads the way upstairs, though Salazar has to stop twice on the short stairwell to catch his breath. The young man shows remarkable patience, though Ignotus’s eyes burn with the need to drag Salazar up the stairs just to hurry assistance to his brother.

Cadmus is in his own private chamber, facing away from them to stare at a ghost. She has pale hair, eyes, and skin, and is dressed in the fashion common to the warm English countryside. Salazar sees fretful longing in her gaze, accompanied by a terrible concern.

Hilda cannot be heard, but her lips move to form words: _He won’t let me go_!

“Cadmus,” Salazar says. “If you can spare a moment, I would speak to you.”

The sandy-haired man turns around on his seat, lifting his head to meet Salazar’s eyes. His eyes are jewel-tone shades of blue set in dark hollows that emphasize those strong colors.

It isn’t Cadmus’s face that he sees. It’s another, younger face with those same blue eyes.

“Riddle,” Salazar whispers. He stumbles back to land with a painful jolt against the wall.

“Saul?” Cadmus and Ignotus both call. Salazar shakes his head as he lurches out into the hall, finds the inn’s upstairs privy, and vomits into the bowl meant for washing. The act hurts so much that he has to sit down on the floor afterward, shaking, until the pain ebbs and takes the panic with it.

“Drink this.” Marisa forces a tankard into his hands. “Mary is good with healing tonics. She thinks you need it.”

Salazar accepts the tankard and catches the scent of intense greenery from a simple Restorative Potion. He glances up to find grey-eyed Mary lurking in the doorway behind Marisa, her brown hair messily piled onto her head and roughly held in place with combs attached to a short veil. Her lips are pinched tight with concern, but she looks almost as weary as Ignotus.

“Thank you.” Salazar tries his best to drink the potion before his belly knots up with the urge to be ill again. “You remembered the sage.” Not many do; it’s considered an unnecessary addition to a potion that already works as it should.

Mary manages a faint smile at the compliment. “It’s a good bit of assistance against evil thoughts. Ignotus is waiting with Cadmus, attempting to get him to send the shade away. What happened, Saul?”

“When I saw Cadmus—I knew another with eyes that color. I had a moment of remembering them. Influenced by pain, no doubt.” It’s easier to breathe and speak as the Restorative does its work. “It was a shock. My apologies.”

“None needed. My betrothed looks so much like a corpse these days that I would find fault with no one for being frightened.”

Marisa and Mary both help him to stand, though Marisa isn’t done fussing. “You should not have traveled so soon, Salazar. You were not ready.”

“Oh, so it’s you _and_ my brother to be fussing, then,” Salazar mutters, using his wand to Vanish the mess in the basin and leave it clean for other guests.

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Mary says politely as Salazar takes the next step forward on his own.

“I…his portrait only, Lady Fausyde.”

“It is far too late for that sort of formality.” Mary touches his elbow. “Ignotus told me why he asked you to come. Please, would you try again?”

Salazar nods. “I said that I would.”

The shade of Hilda is gone when he returns to Cadmus’s room. Ignotus has a strong grip on Cadmus’s hand; the named Resurrection Stone is still resting on Cadmus’s palm. “I’m sorry for that,” Salazar says.

“Our brother almost killed you. No apology is needed, Saul,” Cadmus murmurs, though he doesn’t look up. “Are you well?”

“I will be.” Marisa brings him a chair and then glares at Salazar until he sits on it. Mary rests her hand on Salazar’s shoulder, but it is not a gesture of support for him. He knows she is hoping that Cadmus will notice her presence. “Ignotus has voiced concern for you.”

“He should not.” Cadmus smiles down at the stone. “I have what I wanted, Saul. All will be well.”

“Forgive me for not believing the man who appears as a walking corpse,” Salazar responds in a dry tone. “Are you capable of releasing that stone, Cadmus?”

Cadmus’s fingers curl around it. “Yes. Of course I am.”

Salazar ignores the burn of angry muscles and healing flesh to hold out his arm. “Prove it, then. Place that stone into my hand. I swear to you that I’ll not claim it for myself.”

Cadmus frowns. “You’ll give it to another.”

“No.” Salazar has to take a breath; it’s taking effort to keep his hand outstretched. “I will not. The magic attached to it says it belongs to you. You must gift the stone to another for that ownership to cease. I _cannot_ take it from you.”

Hesitantly, Cadmus reaches out. It takes a full minute for his fingers to unclench, and then the Resurrection Stone falls like a heavy weight into Salazar’s palm. “You have to give it back. You promised.”

“And I will. But before I do, you will go downstairs, and you will allow Marisa to feed you before you wither away to nothing.” Salazar meets those haunting blue eyes with the stern glare of a teacher who will not be swayed. “Then you will tend to your betrothed, who is carrying your son.”

“Son?” Mary repeats in a faint voice. “You’re certain?”

Salazar nods. “I am.”

Cadmus blinks several times before lifting his head. “Mary?”

“You’re seeing me. You haven’t spoken my name in a month,” Mary whispers. “Please come downstairs, my love.”

Ignotus helps Cadmus to stand and has to support his brother with every step as they leave the room. Mary follows them, but Marisa lingers. “Salazar?”

“I’m in pain, Marisa. I’ll follow along when I think I can manage the stairs without assistance.” Salazar gives her a pointed look. “I’m not lying about that, nor am I lying about this stone. It will return to Cadmus’s hand, always, unless he gives it to another.”

“I’d rather he give it to the earth and never let it be seen again. It’s cursed, Salazar. Cadmus tortures both himself and that poor girl by using its magic to bring her here.”

Salazar looks at the carving in the stone, a triangle surrounded by a circle and severed by a single line through its center. “I do not think it was cursed. I don’t even believe Antioch’s wand was cursed until he used it to murder another. I think…I think the brothers brought their own curses upon themselves.”

“You mean to say that despair already lived in Cadmus’s heart,” Marisa says quietly.

Salazar nods. “And anger already lurked in Antioch’s.”

“What of Ignotus, then? What lurks in his heart, Salazar?” Marisa asks.

Salazar turns the stone once in his fingers and can feel the increase of magic against his skin. “Kindness, Marisa. Go be certain that fool Cadmus eats. We may yet be able to save him from himself.”

When she departs, he turns the stone again. The magic becomes almost tangible to his senses, a waiting potential. “Three brothers. Three fates. Three deaths. Three turns,” he says, and flips it in his fingers for the third time.

Nothing happens.

Salazar slumps back in his chair, tears running down his face. “Oh, thank you. Thank you, gods of my childhood. Thank you.”

No spirit answered his call. His brother still lives, safe in a magical portrait in Hogewáþ.

 

*          *          *          *

 

On Salazar’s advice, they never leave Cadmus alone. Cadmus refuses to give up the stone, but it seems as if they might have captured his attention again. Cadmus talks to Mary of their baby, and of the wedding they should have after the Lencten Equinox. Mary is delighted by the change in her betrothed. She sends word to Beauxbatons that she will not be able to join them until the harvest season due to her marriage and impending child. When she arrives to teach, she will need living quarters for a family rather than one adult.

Salazar is not concerned that Cadmus refuses to give up the stone. He did earn it, in a way. The trouble lies in the fact that the young man still devotes at least one hour of each day to basking in Hilda’s presence. Not even Salazar translating her silent words convinces Cadmus that he is all but imprisoning his dead betrothed in a place she does not belong.

That Hilda keeps looking at Salazar with pleading eyes also does not bode well. If a shade is still concerned as to a living man’s fate, then that living man is not nearly as recovered as he seems.

“He is one of Tom Marvolo Riddle’s ancestors.”

Nizar’s portrait looks at him in surprise. “Cadmus Peverell? How do you know?”

“It’s his eyes, Nizar. His eyes are the very same.” Salazar tries to find a more comfortable position in the chair before the hearth, but every movement pains him. He might need to consider slight additions of pain potions to his evening meals in order to rest in comfort, at least for a few more days.

“Then we’re cousins by at least two familial connections instead of one. We’re both of us Peverell-descended.” Nizar grimaces. “It’s annoying enough to know that he’s Deslizarse.”

“Those connections don’t matter, Nizar. Any man can choose to be evil.” He thinks of that truth often while reminding himself that the rest of his and Estefania’s descendants have not chosen evil, even if they have sometimes made poor choices.

When Salazar returns to the village in the second week of April, he knows at once that something is wrong. The church bell is ringing a constant alarm, but the pattern isn’t a warning for impending attack. That’s the call for someone in danger.

He weaves his way through the crowds and finds that one of the few remaining magicians who hasn’t yet traveled on to Beauxbatons is the cause. Gervasius is standing on the peak of the tavern roof, the tallest building in Ducey that is not the church. His arms are outstretched, and he weaves back and forth on his feet as if stirred by the breeze.

“Someone has to get him down!” he hears Alenor cry.

Salazar frowns. Gervasius is one of those who volunteered to assist Ignotus in watching over Cadmus.

He sees Mary standing a few feet away, her hand resting on her sleeve as she hesitates over drawing her wand. He forces his way through the crowd to reach her side to grasp her elbow. “Catch him when he falls. It’s a distraction.”

Mary’s eyes widen. “Cadmus—”

“I’ll go. You. Will. Stay. Here. You’re the only magician I see who is ready to do what must be done to save a life,” Salazar tells her, and then shoves his way past too-curious villagers until he reaches the tavern. The room downstairs is empty. The stairs are still a hellish climb, but this time he can’t afford to stop.

The door to Cadmus’s chamber is shut. The latch lifts when he tries it, but the door won’t move. Salazar growls under his breath and uses his wand to blast the door in. The odor of fresh death strikes him before he can even lift his eyes to view the hanging corpse.

How often had he contemplated the same after Orellana’s sudden passing? How often had he considered joining her in death, stopped only by the presence of his children and his brother?

Cadmus shredded both blanket and bedsheets with an efficiency that speaks of magic and strong intent, reweaving them into a long rope capable of wrapping itself around the rafters. Two chairs lie on the floor, which must have been stacked atop each other to allow Cadmus the means to climb to the correct height.

Salazar watches the man’s body sway back and forth, much as young Gervasius was doing on the roof above. He doesn’t need a healer to tell him that Cadmus is beyond saving, not when his neck is resting at a terrible, unnatural angle.

The Resurrection Stone is lying on the floor beneath Cadmus’s feet, its polished surface reflecting the firelight from the hearth. Salazar picks it up, feeling its magic cleave to the baby that Mary Fausyde is carrying.

“Saul?”

Salazar backs out of the doorway and puts his hand on Ignotus’s chest before the young man can enter the room. “It is not kind.”

Ignotus nods, heartbreak lining his face and darkening his eyes. “I know it was a distraction. Gervasius was—it was Tempero, Saul. He just…I need to see him. Please.”

Salazar glances back into the room. “How do you wish to remember him, Ignotus?”

Ignotus swallows. “I’ve already seen one of my brothers on his deathbed, Salazar. Please.”

Salazar drops his hand and steps away. “Then know that I am so very sorry for what you have lost.”

He has to close his eyes against Ignotus’s grieving wail. It’s worse when Mary comes rushing up the stairs, her hand resting on the gentle swell of her belly. Ignotus’s grief is loud, but hers is silent, and somehow all the more accusatory for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fundraisening still ongoing onto desperation-land. Details on my tumblr.


	5. Founder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You are not a ghost, Salazar, nor a walking dead man. You still breathe. Do not merely exist. Remember to live._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fundraisening chapter! It should have gone up yesterday but I didn't want to post two chapters in one day (and I was also busy faceplanting).
> 
> Beta gratitude still to @norcumi, @sanerontheinside, @mrsstanley, & @jabberwockypie

The elder Peverells arrive the next day, too late for their older sons, but not too late for their youngest. Salazar watches Ignotus introduce Mary to Allanus Peverell and Mariot Uxor. The former is most certainly Norman and non-magical, while the latter still has the bearing of a magician from the Brittonic lineages.

Allanus confronts Salazar that evening in the tavern, where Salazar is doing everything he can to become exceptionally drunk. To his frustration, his constitution is laughing off the local ales. “Ignotus tells me that my firstborn son attempted to murder you.”

Salazar raises his tankard in acknowledgement. “Attempted, yes.” He catches Laurent’s eyes; a moment later the tavern keep has deposited a new tankard on the table for Allanus Peverell. “Feel free to join me. I’m attempting to lose all sensation in my limbs. Alas that it isn’t working.”

Allanus drinks the entire tankard dry before speaking again. “Antioch nearly murdered you, and still you attempted to save my second son.”

Salazar stares at the man. “Yes. And?”

“It’s odd, I suppose,” Allanus murmurs. “I suppose I am used to those who declare feuds against the whole of a family rather than a single…a single…” He chokes on his next word.

“Antioch had many faults, but he loved you, and he loved his brothers,” Salazar says. No father needs to remember his son only as a murderer, not when murder was only a fraction of his existence. “His last act before he succumbed to the temptation of murder was to save his youngest brother’s life.”

“There is that, yes.” Allanus gazes down into the empty tankard as if divining for the future. “My wife and I—we offered Mary the safety of our home, and we are willing to grant her our name. They were betrothed, after all.”

“Oh?”

“She turned down both offers.” Allanus looks perplexed. “She says she already has a place, working at a new school here in France, and that she won’t lie and claim a marriage that never happened. She’d prefer my son’s child remain a bastard.”

“Or perhaps, given that there is no concern over inheritances, she would rather not cling to such ridiculous notions,” Salazar points out. “She is a magician, Allanus Peverell. Surely your wife has told you that we concern ourselves a bit less with what society considers to be proper.”

“She has.” Allanus glances up at him. “Ignotus refuses to come home. He insists that he’ll stay to look after young Mary until after the child is born.”

Salazar smiles. “He’s a good lad with a kind heart. Don’t try to dissuade him from what he feels is right.”

“Mariot said that you would speak thusly. She firmly believes I would be wasting my time to try to convince you otherwise.” Allanus studies him in undisguised curiosity. “I know not of what she speaks, though my wife is certain. Mariot says you have lost many in your time, and still you do not falter. Tomorrow I will see my first son’s grave and watch as my second son is lowered into the ground next to him. How do you bear it?”

Salazar rubs at the scar on his chest, which still aches no matter the ale he’s consumed. “Because I have to, Allanus Peverell. That is the choice we all have to make. We can falter, or we can live.”

Salazar doesn’t remember anything of his fever dreams until noon the next day as he watches while a wooden coffin is lowered into the earth. _You are not a ghost, Salazar, nor a walking dead man. You still breathe. Do not merely exist. Remember to_ live _._

 _Gods know that I am trying, Godric_ , Salazar thinks as the first handfuls of dirt are thrown onto the coffin. Ignotus stands between his parents, his eyes bloodshot from weeping. Mary stands with Laurent and Marisa, who support her as she watches the fool she loved being given back to the earth. The village of Ducey has claimed two Peverell brothers who were far from home. Not for any grand purpose or one of the supposed Great Crusades, but by their own folly.

Has he been trying? How has he lived his life since he bartered with Death for the time he needed?

Salazar has lived as a man who is waiting for his task to be done, and nothing more. He has fathered two children with companions, not loved ones. He looks after his family as best he can. He serves his kingdom still, even if he would rather hex his current king and be done with it.

That is not living. That is existing. Salazar is old enough to know that those are not the same thing.

How shall he live, then? What is it that he can do?

If there is nothing he can think of to do for himself…then what can he offer another?

Salazar discusses his idea with the elves first, as this is their home, not his. Gizzet is the one to return with a decision. Salazar nods in response, sleeps poorly the next few nights, and only returns to the village once he is certain the elder Peverells have begun their journey back to England.

He speaks with Mary and Ignotus at the tavern in a private room upstairs, away from prying eyes and ears. “I have a proposal for you both.”

Ignotus wipes fresh tears from his eyes with one hand, still grieving the loss of both his brothers. “I’m listening.”

“As am I,” Mary adds. Her expression is pinched again, the pain in her heart making her appear soul-weary.

“You’re aware of the fact that I live beyond the village. The keep is a magical property, invisible to anyone who hasn’t been given the words that reveal its existence.” Mary and Ignotus both nod. “I live alone but for a clan of elves who were granted royal sanctuary. It has been…”

Salazar hesitates, feeling as if he’s on the verge of a cold sweat. “I have not taken an apprentice since I departed Hogewáþ.”

“You taught at Hogewáþ?” Mary begins to smile just before the expression falters. “I thought—I thought your appearance was merely coincidence.”

Salazar shakes his head. “It is not.”

Mary’s brow furrows. “Then you are one of our school’s Founders. You are Salazar Slytherin.”

“I knew from the first moment I met him,” Ignotus says. “I never did believe in coincidences.”

“But you must be—”

“Two hundred sixty-six years old as of twenty-eighth December,” Salazar interrupts her gently. “As I told Ignotus last summer, I am of a long-lived line.”

“Very long-lived, then, to appear so hale,” Mary says. “Is it Alchemy that sustains you?”

“No. If a word is required to describe my continued existence at all, then name it duty.”

That satisfies Mary’s curiosity, though Salazar isn’t certain why. However, it stirs Ignotus’s inquisitive nature, whereas before the lad was content.

Now would be a good time to distract them both. “Mary Fausyde: I would offer you sanctuary in that protected keep until you and the child you will bear are ready to travel on to Beauxbatons.”

“Why?” Mary asks, clasping her hands together in bewilderment. “Why do such a thing?”

“Why should I not?” Salazar counters. “You are a magician traveling alone who will bear a magical child. I would be quite remiss not to offer you shelter.”

Ignotus looks surprisingly leery. “You mentioned an apprenticeship.”

“I did say that.” Salazar leans back in his chair, ignoring the twinge of pain in his chest as he does so. “Ignotus, the apprenticeship you completed in Hogewáþ was never the proper one for you. It does not suit your strengths, and you still need to find your way. I don’t yet know if I’m capable of guiding you, or if I am merely another step on your journey…but I am offering to teach you what you wish to know.”

“People may…talk,” Mary ventures. “This is not a common arrangement, even among magicians.”

“People will always do so,” Salazar replies. “But to any who ask questions, you can tell them truthfully that you are sheltering with your chaperone, the uncle to your child, in a royal household—yes, it is that, as it is a property held in trust by the crown of France. That is usually deterrent enough for the gossips. They have no wish to draw royal anger.”

“What would you teach me?” Ignotus seems bewildered again, but so much has happened to the young man of late that Salazar blames him not at all.

“I know quite a bit about many things. I suppose the only way for you to find out is to accept what I’m offering.”

Ignotus bites his lip. “By contract?”

Salazar has just spent nearly two hundred years bound by an unbreakable contract. He is heartily sick of them. “Only if you wish for it to be that way.”

“I accept your offer of shelter and hospitality.” Mary ducks her head as a blush spreads across her cheeks. “I might be short on coin. If not for your kindness, I would be forced to travel by next week.”

“I accept on the terms of acting as Mary’s chaperone,” Ignotus says, once again revealing that he has a sly intelligence. “I’d rather think on your offer of an apprenticeship before I make a decision.”

Salazar smiles in approval. “Ignotus, that is a very wise bargain to make.”

Laurent and Marisa are sad to see Ignotus and Mary depart until they learn that the pair will be staying with Salazar in his home outside the village. Then they’re so pleased that one might suspect they’d thought of the scheme themselves. Ignotus and Mary leave the tavern with promises to return often. Marisa is already intent on spoiling the baby with the intensity of a godmother, making Salazar once again wonder why Laurent and Marisa have no children of their own.

“Oh, we’ve tried,” Laurent says when Salazar finds a quiet moment to ask. “We’re not certain if the fault lies with me, or if my dear wife simply cannot carry children, but Marisa has never had even the hint of a baby in her belly.”

Salazar presses his hand to his chest. The dry air makes him feel like wheezing for breath, and they’ve not even left the warmth of the tavern. “Laurent, I am…accomplished at certain aspects of magic. I owe you much, and would like to attempt to help you both.”

“You owe us nothing, Saul,” Laurent insists, his dark eyes widening a bit in surprise.

“But I do.” Salazar eyes Ignotus and Mary, who are being fussed over by Marisa. “I know how much she wants a babe of her own. There are…” He almost slips and calls them potions, a term that has fallen out of favor in non-magical circles. “There are medicines I can give to you that may help. They also may not, but no matter the outcome, they will not harm either of you at all.”

Laurent puts his hand on Salazar’s shoulder. “I can see the truth of your offer in your eyes, Salazar of Ipuzko. I could live my life in contentment with no children, as could Marisa, but that does not change the fact that we’d like it to be different. I accept, and I know she will, also—but you are still injured, my friend.”

Friend. He can’t remember the last time Salazar was called such outside the realms of fever dreams and politics. “I will not be able to make the attempt until summer, regardless.”

Laurent nods, smiling. “No matter success or failure, you have my thanks.”

At the edge of the keep’s lands, Salazar halts and waits for Ignotus and Mary to join him. “May you find fortune and favor within these walls. Repeat it, please.”

They both do so, and look surprised when what seems to be impassable forest becomes cleared grounds with several gardens and nut-bearing trees. Salazar often reflects that it is a pleasant place to be forced to spend a potential lifetime.

He’d still rather that Ferdinand III die in short order, but he is beginning to believe that his king is going to forego the early deaths that often felled his ancestors and live to be an old man. Such would be Salazar’s rotten fortune.

The elves are introduced to Mary and Ignotus. Salazar is careful to explain to them both that the Norman elves of the royal keep are not like the elves of Hogewáþ, who are bound by contract to exchange services for their housing, payment, and safety. For these elves, Salazar, Mary, and Ignotus are mere guests in _their_ home, even if they are well-treated and respected guests.

Mary is swarmed by pleased elves the moment they realize she is with child. They escort her to what they say were once the quarters for the Lady of the keep, and ignore all of her protests that it is too much space for one not born of royalty or nobility. Even Ignotus seems baffled by the size of the chambers he is granted. They are not as spacious as the rooms given to Salazar and Mary, but they are not small, either.

Salazar allows them to settle into life in the keep before he takes them to see Nizar’s portrait. “My brother,” he introduces them, “Nizar of House Deslizarse, painted in the year 992 when he was but seventeen. Do not let his youth fool you—he was already a master of Mind Magic, Blood Magic, and had just completed his Defence Mastery beneath Godric.”

“Hello,” Nizar greets them when the young man and woman merely stare. “You would be Ignotus Peverell, and you Mary Fausyde, recent students of our school. Master Ignotus and Lady Mary—I am sorry for your recent losses.”

Ignotus recovers his wits first. “Hello, Lord Slytherin—er, Deslizarse—well. Which is proper, sir?”

Nizar looks amused. “Deslizarse is proper, but we knew when to fight our battles and when to wisely give in. Either form of address is suitable for myself and my brother, Ignotus Peverell.”

“I have spoken with your Hogewáþ portrait a few times. My brother, Cadmus—” Ignotus hesitates. “Cadmus spoke of your painting in the dungeon sitting area for Slytherin-aligned students, as well.”

“That sounds suspiciously as if your brother didn’t appreciate my advice,” Nizar’s portrait says dryly.

“You’re so _young_!” Mary bursts out, wide-eyed.

“Yes? Why, do my other paintings imply I should always be wandering about in my dotage?” Nizar asks, grinning.

“I believe it is less that and more that you are younger than I currently am, yet hold three masteries where I hold none,” Ignotus says.

“And I hold only a single mastery, though I am twenty-one years of age.” Mary looks disappointed. “We must be poor students indeed.”

Salazar does not like the brief expression of dark concern that flashes across Nizar’s painted face. “I somehow doubt that very much, for reasons I will never be able to truly explain to either of you. In the meantime, you are enduring the company of two Slytherin teachers who have always been quite intent on making certain that others are educated. If you decide you wish to learn more, you certainly have the means available to do so.”

“That is very kind of you. Both of you, my Lords,” Mary says, dipping into a slight curtsey.

“Oh, gods, not that again,” Nizar grumbles. “I’m a teacher first, and nobility when I’ve no choice at all.”

“And you would suddenly treat differently with me after months of familiarity?” Salazar asks, amused.

Ignotus and Mary glance at each other. “Well…” Mary trails off, blushing again.

“I suppose not,” Ignotus says. “It just seems silly when spoken of that way. No wonder my brother Cadmus whinged so much about your portrait.”

Nizar shrugs. “Some never quite adapt to the fine art of words. He should have been grateful he dealt with me and not with our sister. Oh, and my portrait was updated beyond the early years of age seventeen. I am learned also in Pictish magic, Geomancy, and Transfiguration, though my specialty is in the Metamorph magics. I do not know if the school recalls the whole of Salazar’s abilities, but he holds masteries in Potions, Divination, Astrological Magics, Mind Magic, and the elemental form of Earth-Speaking. Then there is the knowledge of Making Magic, basic Elemental Magic, Wood-working, Charms, Arithmancy, Healing, History, Curses, Rune Magic, Enchantments…”

Mary seems bewildered by the long list, but Ignotus lights up at once. “Making Magic. What do you know of it, Nizar?”

In that moment, Salazar knows exactly why Ignotus Peverell’s apprenticeship in Charms is incomplete. It was always meant to be paired with another magical mastery. Perhaps more than one, given the excitement Ignotus displays.

It matters not that this is a mere portrait of Nizar. His brother remains a genius.

 

*          *          *          *

 

Ignotus waits three days and nights before saying he’ll accept an apprenticeship under Salazar. He’s surprised the young man held out that long before making his formal request. There is no contract; there is no need for one.

Mary does not ask for any sort of apprenticeship, but she often joins them as Salazar talks about or displays varying types of magic upon Ignotus’s request. Often Ignotus can be found sitting near the hearth before the fire in Salazar’s sitting room, listening to Nizar’s portrait speak of lessons from other early teachers in Hogewáþ, filling in gaps in Ignotus Peverell’s education that should not exist.

“Did our school falter so soon in its task, little brother?” Salazar asks the portrait one night after the Lencten Equinox. “Did it truly?”

“Sal, I don’t know,” Nizar replies, idly tracing the embroidery on his black sleeve. “It may simply be due to the current generation of teachers within the school, not Hogewáþ itself. At least these lapses are nothing like what you were faced with me in 990.”

“I would be truly horrified if they were,” Salazar says. Nizar rolls his eyes and pretends to ignore him for the rest of the evening.

It is no difficulty to teach Ignotus, steering his apprenticeship towards the right set of lessons that will weave their way around his innate magical talents to create an amazing magician. He is unbothered by Mary’s pregnancy, which causes her belly to seem larger by the day. She bears it with impatient grace and is still the favorite of the elves, who love babies of all species with unrestrained joy.

The hardship of it all lies in the fact that Salazar is no longer accustomed to living with people. He feels anxious and distressed within the walls of the keep; the feeling only goes away when he retreats to the grounds or the woods. He even feels at ease in the Langlois Tavern, no matter how many people it holds. It’s sharing his living quarters that may drive him to excessive drinking.

Whether he was a fever dream or real spirit, Godric was right. Salazar has merely been existing, more ghost than living man. This terror of other people is proof of it.

It takes time to dismantle that fear, that desire to avoid anyone in the keep who is not a portrait or an elf. Salazar doesn’t think Mary notices, preoccupied as she is with her unborn child, but Ignotus does. He is kind enough not to say anything about Salazar’s sudden need to absent himself at random times throughout the day. He only asks one question on an evening when Salazar is not feeling the need to flee the room.

“When was the last time you lived with other magicians?”

Salazar glances over at Ignotus, who is merely giving him a look of polite inquiry. “I spent Samhain in 1039 in the company of dear friends. I was in Castile until 1043, dwelling with my sister’s family. I visited my two surviving children and their grandchildren after leaving the family home in Burgos, but have not lived with anyone else since that time.”

“Oh.” Ignotus swallows. “Nearly two hundred years, then.”

Salazar nods. “Sharing a home is…difficult.”

“And still you offered Mary and myself a place here.” Ignotus stands up and smiles. “If I ever return to Hogewáþ, I will have choice words to say to certain individuals on your behalf.”

“Why?”

Ignotus halts in place, frowning. “Because what they say of you—from what I’ve learned during our acquaintance—half of it is true, and half of it is the worst sort of falsehoods. Even what is said about Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff is not what you yourself claim them to be like, though their histories are not as maligned as yours.”

“It is an unfortunate fact that sometimes history is written by utter fools. Like Ovid,” Salazar adds in a light voice. Ignotus, recently introduced to the proper form of the stories that Publius Ovidius Naso warped and changed, laughs before he leaves the kitchen.

“Shit,” Salazar mutters. He hadn’t expected his own reputation to be maligned so early, but that is the way it must be. He knows it to be because Nizar lived it, and there is nothing to be done.

“Transfiguration. That is what you’re missing,” Salazar realizes in June.

Ignotus looks up from the letter he is writing to his parents, once again assuring them that he is well, Mary is well, their unborn grandchild is well, and no one is in the slightest danger of dying. The Peverell family falcon is starting to look frazzled from all of its trips across the ocean that separates France from England. “I learned Transfiguration in school.”

“Yes, you did, but that does not mean you learned how to apply it to your skill in Charms and your interest in Inventing Magics,” Salazar retorts. “Weaving, Peverell. You need to learn how to make the three work together as one magic, not separate aspects. Do that, and you will be capable of greatness.”

“I’m not so certain I’m worried about greatness,” Ignotus says doubtfully.

Salazar rolls his eyes. “Greatness also implies the ability to earn coin, something a young man will need if he ever intends to begin a family of his own.”

“Oh.” Ignotus seems bewildered by the notion of marriage and children. “Yes. I hadn’t even thought—you’re right. There is more than one reason to be skilled aside from the joy of the accomplishment, isn’t there?”

Salazar walks away before he starts growling about how Cadmus and Ignotus Peverell should have been Sorted by that drunken Hat into opposite Houses in the school. Cadmus needed the fire that often developed in Godric’s students. Ignotus was in dire need of Slytherin. The fact that he now has a Slytherin teacher is not the point.

 

*          *          *          *

 

Mary’s birth pains begin on the twenty-eighth of July, during the worst heat of the summer. The elves ban everyone from Mary’s chamber but for Marisa, who takes the existence and appearance of the elves quite well for the non-magical wife of a tavern keep.

Long hours later, just before the twenty-eighth gives way to the twenty-ninth, Marisa emerges from the chamber bearing a wrapped and tiny bundle. “A son, just as you once thought, Salazar,” Marisa says, placing the baby into Ignotus’s waiting arms. “Your nephew, Ignotus. Mary has named him Valerian Peverell Fausyde.”

Ignotus smiles down at the sleeping baby. “For my brother, then.”

Marisa pats his arm. “No. She gave him the name in honor of you, the most steadfast and loyal of your family. I must be off.” She places a hand on her belly, just beginning to round with the child she now carries. “I am exhausted from assisting with this birth. Laurent will be concerned if I do not see home this night.”

“We will be taking you, Madam Langlois.” Chossi the elf takes Marisa’s hand. “It is a long walk at such an hour, and we will see you home in safety.”

“Thank you, dear Chossi,” Marisa says, and then they vanish.

Ignotus’s young brow is furrowed. “I’d rather she’d chosen Peverell for the child’s father, but…I suppose I know why she would want it to be otherwise.”

“Cadmus’s loss still pains her heart.” Gods know that Salazar is still grateful he and Orellana decided upon Zuri’s name before her death. If they had not, bitterness might have tainted any name Salazar chose for his first son.

“Valerian sounds familiar. Does it mean anything, Salazar?”

“It’s Roman Latin, originating from the word _valere_. It means ‘to be strong,’” Salazar tells him.

“A good name, then,” Ignotus murmurs. “Mary chose well.”

A week later, Mary tells them that she’s received word from Beauxbatons. She is moving easily again, and wanders through the keep with baby Valerian resting in a sling at her breast. “I was beginning to think they’d forgotten me.”

“What did they say?” Ignotus asks. His face is twisted up in concentration as he desperately attempts to apply a charm to a Transfigured object without interfering with the magic that changed its shape. So many magicians make the error of assuming that a Transfigured object is easy to charm, but the object remembers most what it was before its shape was changed, and is fond of reverting the moment it contacts magic once more.

“They are still willing to grant me my teaching post, and my family quarters, given that I have birthed a son…but I need to be there by mid-August.” Mary gives Valerian her finger to gum upon when the infant voices brief discontent. “Otherwise they will be forced to grant my posting to another. I can’t blame them for making such a decision.”

Salazar rests his chin on his hands. “Then we will simply have to get you there on time, won’t we?”

Mary frowns. “I’m not certain how that is possible. The trip overland from here will be long, and Valerian is too young for such a journey.”

“But not too young for Desplazarse.” Salazar smiles at them when Mary and Ignotus give him near-identical suspicious looks. “Did you think I would discover a magical school opening its doors and then never bother to find the landmarks making it possible to speed up the journey? I do quite a bit when your backs are turned, you know.”

“I think we’ve come to realize that, yes,” Ignotus says wryly. “Mary?”

“Teaching with an infant is not the concern. It’s always been the journey.” Mary hefts Valerian in his sling in order to hold him close. “What would multiple magical journeys do to an infant, Salazar?”

“If I am the one performing the Desplazarse, it need only be a single journey, not many,” Salazar replies. “I’m an Earth-Speaker. If I travel directly from one place to another, I am limited only by the bodies of water that are in my way. Traveling great distances over the earth is no trial at all.”

“Then I accept, with relief.” Mary smiles down at the baby. “Thank you.”

Before Mary and Valerian’s departure, Salazar performs one secret act that he does not allow Ignotus to know of. He isn’t certain how Ignotus would take to the idea of what must be done, and Salazar has no choice. The magic has been prodding at him from the moment he retrieved the stone from beneath Cadmus Peverell’s hanging corpse.

“Hold out your hand, Mary Fausyde,” Salazar instructs. Mary gives him a concerned look, but does so, and Salazar drops the Peverell-named Resurrection Stone into her palm.

Mary’s eyes take on the sheen of tears. “But this is—”

“Merely a stone, Mary Fausyde, if one with special properties,” Salazar says gently. “When Cadmus claimed it, the stone became attached to his bloodline. You’re meant to hold it in trust for Valerian until he comes of age.”

“I don’t want my son to have this,” Mary whispers. “Not after what it did to Cadmus.”

“Valerian will have an advantage that Cadmus did not—a mother who will raise him to properly understand that all magical items can be dangerous. Valerian has no choice but to call this Stone his own, but you will be the one to teach him the necessity of treating it with caution and respect.”

Mary turns the Stone over in her hands once. Salazar tries not to wince at the feel of increasing magic in the air. He has not dared to use it since he made certain of his brother’s continued existence. “You’re right,” she murmurs. “I can feel it. I can tell that it’s meant to be his. That does not mean I have to like it.”

Salazar reaches out and folds her fingers over the Stone before she can turn it again. “If you turn it three times while thinking on the dead, you will call them forth, whether that spirit wishes to be here or not. Do so only if you think it wise.”

“It is not a kindness to call the dead back here. If they wished not to have gone, they would linger as ghosts.” Mary bites her lip before placing the Resurrection Stone into the deep pocket of her skirt. “You once said that Cadmus could give up the stone if he chose to gift it to another. Could Valerian not do the same?”

“Perhaps.” Salazar hesitates. “There is no reason why it should not be, but you will be giving Valerian an item that belonged to a father he never knew. That is a connection he may not be willing to part with, even if he never turns the stone in his hand to seek another.”

Mary nods, sighs, and then reaches out to embrace him. Salazar is careful when he returns it, not wanting Valerian to wail in anger at being trapped between them. “You would destroy it if you could, wouldn’t you? Just as Ignotus attempted before Cadmus’s death.”

“Yes.” Salazar can still feel the magic from the Hallow lingering in the air. “I most certainly would.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Salazar doesn’t assign any special meaning to the messenger bird he receives in May of 1237. He is used to Blanche sending along quarterly missives that keep him apprised of the politics of Europe. The varying nuances and insanity have changed little since his childhood, though now the Church is often the most active and powerful political body.

That changes when he reads the letter Blanche enclosed, one written with utmost care and concern for her words. “No,” he breathes, and reads it through once more in hopes that he has misunderstood the letter. Alas that he has not.

“Salazar?”

He glances up to find Ignotus gazing at him in concern. “You’ve gone pale,” Ignotus says. “Are you all right?”

Salazar stands up, the letter clenched in his closed fist. “Not at the moment.” He uses Desplazarse before he allows himself further words. He doesn’t want to speak of this, not yet.

He truly hates King Ferdinand of Castile and León now, whereas before it was merely intense loathing.

He wanders the grounds, the riverbank, and the outer edges of Ducey until long past sunset. Only then does he walk back to the keep in the darkness, his excellent vision leading him unerringly along. The silvery shades of blue and violet suit his mood.

Ignotus and several elves are waiting for him when Salazar returns to the keep. He nods at the elves and then gestures for Ignotus to follow him to Salazar’s sitting room. What he has to say should also be overheard by Nizar’s portrait.

“I have two things to tell you,” Salazar begins once they are seated. “The first: you have learned all that I am capable of teaching you in regards to your new mastery, Ignotus Peverell.” He holds up his hand when Ignotus opens his mouth in surprise, requesting silence. “I’d come to realize this yesterday, but had not yet decided on how to inform you. The news I received today means that I am, perhaps, being more blunt than I should be in this regard, but that does not make it any less true.”

Ignotus frowns. “I truly have a mastery, then?”

Salazar calls for the elf Zannir. “Name young Peverell’s magical masteries for me, please.”

Zannir nods and smiles at Ignotus. “The young Master Peverell is a magical master of Charms, Transfiguration, and Magical Making. You will be a Master Crafter!” the elf declares, and Ignotus grins wide. He still looks so young that it is hard to credit that the man is twenty-one years of age.

“Master Crafter?” Ignotus repeats when Zannir departs.

“The elves themselves are often great crafters. They appreciate it when the skill is reflected in others.”

“Yes. I’ve seen that on occasion, but I suppose I didn’t realize how much they valued it.” Ignotus looks at Salazar. “The letter you received. What did it say?”

“That letter was from the Queen Mother of France, Blanche of Castile. She is half-sister to Berenguela, Queen Consort of León and Queen of Castile before she abdicated the Castilian throne. Queen Berenguela’s youngest daughter, Berenguela of León, is named for her mother. She is considered to be the last child of her mother’s marriage to Alfonso IX of León before the pope gave in to political pressure and voided their marriage.”

“Every time you discuss politics, it makes me so very glad to have been born to a family that hasn’t been associated with nobility in several generations,” Ignotus says.

“It is a bit complicated, yes.” Salazar tries to smooth out the letter he crushed earlier, but suspects it will take a gentle application of magic to make it pristine again. “Berenguela of León is not the daughter of Alfonso IX. She was conceived in Burgos when the dissolution of her mother’s marriage forced her to return to her father’s Court in Castile.”

Ignotus has always been quick to recognize certain truths. “You’re her father. Berenguela of León is your daughter.”

“I am.” Salazar tilts the tankard of ale the elves gave him, uncertain if he wishes to drink it. “It was not a planned affair. Queen Berenguela truly loved her husband. To be forced by the Church to abandon Alfonso was a terrible pain in her heart. I’ve known Berenguela all of her life, and spent a great deal of time attempting to comfort her. One night, that comfort went farther than either of us intended. We did not regret the act, nor did Berenguela regret when she realized that single night resulted in what would be her final pregnancy. I was willing to marry her, if she wished, but Berenguela thought it better for others to believe that newborn Berenguela of León was Alfonso IX’s last daughter…or perhaps she simply did not want to marry a man who is not Christian. Such distinctions didn’t matter when I married my second wife, but now…” He trails off, not certain he knows what to say in regards to the Church’s seizure of power. It is so much more difficult to exist now if one is nobility or royalty, knowing that one must often have the Church’s approval to carry on with even the most basic tasks of life.

“I think it’s a lot easier to get married if you’re not nobility,” Ignotus says, echoing Salazar’s thoughts. “But I haven’t had to face that difficulty. I could be wrong.”

“I’m not certain I want to face that difficulty ever again, even though children are often worth the cost.” Salazar thinks on those years and smiles. “My daughter was raised in Burgos. It was of great relief to her mother to know that another parent was present to look after her youngest child. It gave the queen time and opportunity to make certain one of her sons took the Castilian throne after her father died. Then her focus became the attainment of a goal the family has held for a very long time—the reunification of Castile and León.”

His daughter had always known that to others, her father was Alfonso IX, King of León. In private, Berenguela of León grew up knowing that her father was the Marqués Salazar Fernan, magical ally of her mother and one of Castile’s oldest protectors. She never minded that she herself was non-magical, despite her father’s talents, saying that her life would likely be complicated enough. Salazar watched his daughter grow to adulthood in safety. He made certain Berenguela was educated enough to understand that she’d more options in life than retreat to an abbey or to accept a marriage to the first available man who showed passing interest.

Instead, Berenguela had been fortunate enough to find true happiness, and Salazar remains grateful to have borne witness. “Do you know of John of Brienne?”

“Yes.” Ignotus frowns. “He used to be the king of Jerusalem, but there was some political disagreement between the king and the Western Emperor, a falling out. Then the Emperor claimed Jerusalem’s throne.”

“If by falling out you mean a murder attempt, you would be correct,” Salazar says in a dry voice. “Before that event, John of Brienne was of Champagne, and devout enough that when he returned to the West, he paid a visit to Santiago de Compostela, a holy city on the coast. The widowed John had also returned in order to marry a daughter of Alfonso IX of León from a differing marriage, but the Queen Mother Blanche and Queen Berenguela convinced him to first view the daughters of the Castilian throne. John met Berenguela of León in 1224. He was fifty-three; she was twenty. Despite the difference in age, they fell utterly in love with one another and were married in May of that year, barely a month after their first meeting.

“As for that famous _disagreement_ : within a year of John’s marriage to Berenguela, the Emperor decided that John was trying to usurp one of Frederick’s many thrones, attempted to murder him, forced John and Berenguela to flee, and then declared himself King of Jerusalem in December of 1225. It is even worse if you consider that the Emperor Frederick is John’s son-in-law, as Frederick married John’s daughter Isabella.”

“Dear God,” Ignotus mutters.

“The lords of Jerusalem supported the Emperor; the pope and the Church supported John and Berenguela. When Frederick would not return the throne he had stolen, he was excommunicated by the Church.”

“He wouldn’t even give up the throne in the face of losing the Church’s blessing?” Ignotus asks in disbelief. “Is the man mad?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Salazar replies. “I have yet to meet the Emperor, but his actions certainly paint it a possibility, don’t they? However, it became a moot point. At the end of 1229, John ceased caring about his lost throne. Envoys from Constantinople had arrived with a proposed alliance for John and Berenguela’s daughter to wed twelve-year-old Emperor Baldwin II. My granddaughter, Marie, was four years old at the time.”

“That is too young to wed, no matter who you are,” Ignotus says in displeasure.

“You are not wrong. Delaying the wedding until the summer of 1234 did not improve matters very much, as Marie was then only nine, and the future Emperor seventeen.” Salazar rubs his face with one hand. “I’d planned to be there as witness to the ceremony. Instead, I was banished to France on Ferdinand’s order when he invoked magic I have no choice but to obey.”

“Because you are still a Magical Marqués of Castile.” Ignotus looks sympathetic. “I’m not certain why you’re telling me all of this. You’re not often willing to discuss family. Magic, certainly, but family? Almost never.”

“It is currently a distraction from how much I desperately wish to murder my own king.” Salazar holds up the letter. “Blanche sent word to tell me that my daughter and her husband are both dead. John died of ill health at the age of sixty-six in March, though I suspect Constantinople’s constant need to defend itself contributed to his death. Berenguela died on the twelfth of April, one month ago today. It was not injury or illness that took her life, but grief.”

Ignotus rears back in shock. “But—she was still young!”

“Not as young as Marie. With the death of her parents, a twelve-year-old girl is the sole remaining Imperial representative within Constantinople, as her _husband_ is off touring Europe to beg for money!” Salazar puts the letter aside before he inadvertently destroys it. “I have a young family member trapped in a terrible situation, and I can do _nothing_. That is why I had to absent myself earlier. I cannot leave this kingdom, Ignotus. I cannot look after my granddaughter. I can’t fulfil the oath I gave to her grandmother—and I can’t kill the absolute bastard who has caused this difficulty!”

“If I could get out of this damned portrait, _I_ would kill him,” Nizar says. “She’s my grandniece, Ignotus!” he spits when Ignotus gives the portrait a startled glance. “It matters not that she is the Empress Consort of Constantinople—Marie is twelve years old. She is alone, surrounded on all sides by politicians who would twist her actions and words to serve their own purposes!”

“Murder is not always the best solution,” Ignotus tries.

“It is when they sarding well deserve it,” Nizar mutters. “And before you compare such a thought to your eldest deceased sibling, do bear in mind that I specified _deserve_.”

“I wasn’t going to mention that,” Ignotus protests, though Salazar suspects otherwise. Nizar does not say such things needlessly.

“What are you going to do, Salazar?” Ignotus asks.

Salazar closes his eyes and allows himself a brief sigh. “I’ll be sending you on to the village whenever you’re ready to depart, the better to arrange transportation for the next place you wish to visit. No matter where you go, consider the journey paid for. After that, I am going to write Blanche the foulest letter she will ever view in her life in a fruitless attempt to relieve myself of this anger.”

They sit together in silence after that. Salazar does not actually know how much time has passed before Ignotus says, “Home,” in a quiet voice. “Godric’s Hollow. Your talk of family, of your inability to reach them…I don’t know how much time my parents have left on this earth, but whatever remains, I’d like to spend it in their company. I don’t want to have cause for that sort of regret.”

Salazar finally raises the tankard he’s been given. “That is a very wise decision, Master Magician.”

Ignotus shrugs a little before raising his tankard in return. “Thank you. I—I’ll visit, you know. As long as you don’t change the Loyalty Charm and leave me wandering the woods, unable to find this place.”

Mary promised the same when she departed for Beauxbatons, and true to her word, has been back for at least a fortnight every year in the three years since her departure. “I won’t change the words. I’ll be here for a while yet, I fear.”

“I do have an Invisibility Cloak, you know. I could briefly visit Castile and slap a king without him ever once knowing,” Ignotus offers. Nizar’s portrait lets out a sound of badly restrained laughter.

Salazar smiles. He still has an Invisibility Cloak, as well, literally the same as the one Ignotus now carries. “It really is best not to offer me those sorts of temptations.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

They do continue to visit, as promised, though it is often no more than once a year. Salazar is better about leaving the keep and spending time in Ducey, so his brief glimpses into the lives of Ignotus and Mary is not as painful as it otherwise could be.

Mary spends five years teaching in Beauxbatons as their Master Warder, instructing magicians of all ages in the ways of constructing wards and protections for themselves, their homes, or loved ones. Valerian takes his name literally, and by his fifth birthday is the size of a child several years older. Given that he resembles his pale-skinned, brown-haired, grey-eyed mother, it makes him look like quite the Viking. Salazar tells him so—to Mary’s displeasure, who grew up on the tales of the horrors the _vikingr_ left in their wake, and knows nothing of their culture.

That is an unplanned and very _long_ lesson to undertake. Fortunately, Valerian has no interest in raiding. He wants to teach, like his mother, or build, like his uncle.

Salazar finds himself often relieved that Valerian does not share his father’s jewel blue eyes. Seeing the shadow of the future on Cadmus’s gaunt face had been shock enough.

Ignotus marries well to a noblewoman named Iolanthe de Brus. She’s a magician who schooled within her family, but is quite the skilled duelist and a good brewer of healing potions. Despite several years of trying, they still only have one child for it, a son named Wychardus. He is an engaging child just beginning to toddle around, but already demonstrates his father’s sharp intelligence and his mother’s kind wit. Wychardus is the one who inherits those haunting jewel-blue eyes, but with his darker skin and messy red hair, he reminds Salazar of Tom Riddle not at all.

Neither child resembles Antioch. Salazar is selfishly glad for it.

After her sixth year of teaching, Mary decides to return to England—in the company of her betrothed, a fellow teacher named Amis le Roux. He is her elder by ten years, and more than ready to retire to a much quieter life. Salazar watches Amis interact with Valerian and considers it a good match, as the man shows no signs of resenting the child of another man. Amis seems to enjoy being a father, and looks relieved to be responsible for only a single boy instead of an entire class of students trying to learn Rune Magic.

“And of course, the moment you are freed from this obligation, you must visit Godric’s Hollow,” Ignotus says during their latest visit. Wychardus is busy trying to climb the keep’s outer wall, and has enough magic coursing through his veins that he may well succeed before Iolanthe can pry him off the stone.

Salazar hesitates before nodding his agreement. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen that village, and it bore another name in those days.”

“What was that, then?” Ignotus asks. “I’ve never known it to be anything else.”

Salazar smiles. “Griffon’s Door.”

“Griffon’s Door. Gryffindor.” Ignotus shakes his head, grinning. “It used to be even more obvious, then.”

“Quite,” Salazar says. “It is Raven’s Claw that has not changed. If you ever travel to Bavaria, you should seek it out. The land is…peaceful.”

“I doubt I’m the only one who could do with a bit of peace,” Ignotus replies. When Wychardus has been coaxed down off the wall by sheer bribery, they take their leave. Salazar is amused—if that young one doesn’t Sort to Slytherin in Hogewáþ, Salazar will eat a boulder.


	6. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lasting pleasure of the truth is finer than the brief amusement of a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betas awesome, fever = loopy.

It takes Ferdinand III, King of Castile and León, eighteen sarding years to finally die. His son, Alfonso X of Castile and León, ascends to the throne on the first day of June in 1252.

Salazar made his peace with his forced exile in France long ago, but that doesn’t mean he is not irritated by the long wait. When the news reaches him that his now-former king died on the thirtieth of May, Salazar makes plans to journey home immediately.

The village of Ducey has grown fond of their neighbor who dwells in the northern forest, and it takes Salazar most of a day to speak to each of them, exchanging final words and farewells. Laurent and Marisa Langlois are sad to see him go, but understand why he wishes to leave.

“We’ll miss your company in the evenings,” Laurent says as his two youngest boys run laps around them. “We still feel as if we’ve done nothing to repay you for the gifts you gave to us.”

Salazar reaches out and catches young Norman by the shoulder before the lad can plant his face into the dirt. “You were fine company. That is payment enough.”

Marisa stands on her toes to kiss Salazar’s cheek. “We will keep you in our prayers, Salazar.”

Their eldest, Bernicia, is already betrothed to a fine young man. She holds out her hand with a demure smile. “May your return home bring you happiness, Lord Salazar.”

“May your marriage always bring you joy,” Salazar replies. He walks away from Ducey for the last time, his eyes burning with tears that he would rather not shed. It is not the first parting he has ever faced, or the worst, and it will not be the last.

He doesn’t expect the Sélune elves to wish to depart with him. “But your treaty with the Crown—”

“Their Majesties have made it clear what they think of magic, much less those who are unlike themselves,” Gizzet responds crossly, a sentiment repeated by all of the elves crowding the kitchen. “We have all spoken and agreed, Salazar of House Deslizarse. The Queen Mother Blanche’s efforts to conceal this keep and our existence from her son’s eyes will not last forever. When we are one day discovered, we will have no place to go.”

Salazar sits down and sighs. “I dislike this truth, but you are likely correct.”

“You have a home in the land of Ipuzko, you have said. What servants tend to its needs?” Fallis asks.

“I—none, at the moment,” Salazar admits. His father’s home is probably in unfortunate condition due to his long absence. “It once housed any of my father’s bloodline who needed refuge, but when the sentiment against magic increased, I was forced to place my ancestral home under the Loyalty Charm. None know the words to find it but for myself.”

Chossi’s ears twitch, causing the silver in her ears to emit a gentle chime. “You have been a very good friend to us for many years now. We know that you would never abuse our trust, nor we yours. Normandy has long been our home, but it is a home we will part from in order to ensure our clan’s survival.”

“All elves in the West know of Nizar of House Deslizarse,” Jebbiel says. “He rescued the Brae Elves, and the Founders of Hogewáþ ensured they had a new home and safety within its walls.”

Zannir reaches out to pat Salazar’s leg. “We will also need a home, Salazar of House Deslizarse. The Burgos Elves tell us your family has been kind to our people for centuries.”

Gizzet nods. “Let us write a contract we all find to be kind and satisfactory. Let magic bind us together in peace, one no man or elf can sunder.”

Salazar gives in. There is no convincing this pack of elves of anything once they’ve made up their minds. It is easier to seek out quill, ink, and paper, sitting down in one of the keep’s well-lit rooms to write. He spends a few minutes pondering what few words he writes before he tosses down his quill and goes to his brother’s portrait. “Help.”

“You can’t remember the contract with the Brae Elves?” Nizar asks in surprise.

“Not in the exact form it was written!” Salazar considers lying down on the floor to hurl curses at the ceiling. “It’s only been two hundred-fifty years. Should I not recall this?”

“Two hundred fifty-eight years, and not two hundred fifty-nine until January,” Nizar corrects him. “You asked to not die. I do not recall your stupid bargain with Death involving anything in regards to perfect recollection.”

Salazar puts his hands over his face and groans. “Of course it didn’t. Why would such ever occur to me? Brother, I’m an idiot.”

“I’ve been saying that for years,” Nizar replies, grinning. “Bring over a quill and a sheet of paper. I’ll recite the contract for you.”

Salazar drops his hands and looks at the portrait. “I do hope you realize that your lack of forgetfulness means I will be informing you of _all_ of my doings.”

“Given what happened to your first journals, I don’t blame you for that, but…” Nizar frowns. “Salazar, outside of Hogewáþ, I have no idea what magic this portrait will retain. It would not be wise to rely on me to remember your doings. You should return to chronicling your life. If something ever happened to this portrait, you would be shit out of luck, Sal.”

 _Shit out of luck_ is another phrase from Nizar’s original English that takes him a moment to recall. “That is an excellent point.”

Once he has the contract copied down, Salazar has little trouble amending the original contract with the Brae Elves within Hogewáþ to suit the Norman Sélune elves, who claim that the Brae contract is quite similar to the treaty they signed with the French crown.

“My home is near the ocean, not a river,” Salazar warns them.

“Water is water,” Fallis says with a complete lack of concern. “Salt and depth does not change the element, merely the power it contains.” As a teacher who once instructed others in Elemental Magic, Salazar thinks that a well-spoken explanation.

“We can no longer be the elves of Sélune,” Gizzet tells Salazar before the final copy of the contract is to be written. “We will be leaving this place, but that name stays here.”

“Then how shall I refer to you?” Salazar asks. He is already scribbling on the previous draft of the contract to note the change, lest some fool comes along centuries later and attempt to use the clan’s two names against them.

“We are water elves. We are the Elves of Faithful Water,” Gizzet says. “But it should be in a tongue local to our new home, not _franceis_ or Norman.”

“Faithful water, in Euskaran, is _Ur Leial_. We have no term for elf, as we have no local clans. Instead we have the _iratxo_ , who are harmless, but they are wingless troublemakers if one does not know how to cope with them.” Salazar has met nothing like the _iratxo_ anywhere else. Given their appearance, he suspects their species came about when gnomes and pixies, for whatever reason, decided to mate. “In Castile, we say _elfos_.” Salazar finishes his work with the quill. “You would be called _Los Elfos de Ur Leial_ , if that suits you.”

“The Elves of Ur Leial is proper and fitting,” Gizzet decides, and leaves Salazar to his writing. The finished contract is signed by Gizzet and Chossi, the eldest of their clan, and by Salazar, who is still the recognized magical head of his bloodline.

“It’s time to depart,” Salazar warns Nizar on their final day. “I hope you don’t mind giving up your means to travel from canvas to canvas again.”

“You’re more important,” Nizar says, and then smirks at him. “Do be careful folding up this painting. I don’t need to gain more wrinkles than you possess.”

“ _You’re a terrible sibling_ ,” Salazar hisses as he takes the canvas down from the wall and removes it from its frame.

“ _That’s the best sort of sibling to have_ ,” Nizar counters, and then falls silent as Salazar folds up the canvas for travel.

Salazar meant to observe proper hospitality and bid his hostess farewell before leaving the kingdom, but he cannot take seventy-four elves to Paris. Once they have all packed their belongings, and Nizar’s portrait is again residing in a secret pocket within Salazar’s clothing, he and the elves gather together outside. “If you’ve forgotten anything, you can return for it while the Queen Mother of France still lives,” Salazar reminds them. He uses Mind Magic to show Gizzet and Chossi an image of the place they will magically travel to; the oldest elves begin showing or telling the others until all the elves, even the youngest, will be able to find the hillside in Ipuzko.

“It is very pretty,” young Rissa says. “Quite green.”

“My brother thought much the same when he first saw it.” Salazar smiles. “The words to view the whole of it are _Lurrak ongietor gaitzake._ The charm will not lift unless it is said in Euskaran.”

“ _Lurrak ongietor gaitzake_ ,” the elves repeat. There are only a few errors in pronunciation, quickly corrected.

“Go now. I will be the last to depart so I am available if any of you have difficulties with the journey.”

Salazar needn’t have concerned himself. The elves are all gone from the grounds within a minute. He waits a moment longer, just in case. Then he uses Desplazarse, fueled by his ability as an Earth-Speaker, to travel all the way from Normandy to his family’s ancient home in Ipuzko.

He is met on the hillside by a cadre of appalled elves. “The conditions are deplorable!” Gizzet chastises him, poking Salazar in the leg with one bony finger. “How could a magician let their home deteriorate in this way?”

Salazar uses the vantage point to take in his father’s home. He grimaces at what he sees. “You do recall that I was banished from my homeland eighteen years ago, yes?”

Stones have crumbled and fallen; there are water lines on the walls where no water should ever have reached. The grounds are an overgrown disaster. It appears and feels as deserted as it truly has been. Salazar’s father would kill him for letting their home descend into this terrible state. He hopes the water damage is limited to the outer walls, and that nothing stored within has been destroyed. Much of it can never be replaced.

“I had not forgotten, but…” Gizzet lets out an irritable sigh. “Leave us plentiful coin, Salazar of House Deslizarse. It will require time and effort to restore our home to what it should be.”

That isn’t a difficulty at all. “I’ll return as soon as politics allow,” Salazar promises them, but is waved off by elves, all of whom are impatient to move in and claim their new home. He’d much prefer to remain, as well, but he has responsibilities that cannot be avoided.

 _Be careful_ , he reminds himself. Do not be caught off your guard, not again.

Salazar first goes to the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas, which sits west of Burgos on what was once a farmer’s wide expanse of land. He walks past the growing collection of royal tombs until he finds the one added in November of 1246.

“Hello, Your Majesty,” Salazar greets Queen Berenguela’s stone sarcophagus. “I’m not certain I have any polite words left for you. It seems I was easy for you to forget, given that I never received word from you at all these past eighteen years. I know from your own sister that your daughter was treated similarly, as was our granddaughter, given the trials she has faced without support from our kingdom.

“I wonder if you forgot that I could scry upon the water, Berenguela. Many times I found you engaged in affairs of state, ruling our kingdom while your son waged war. Such effort you went to on his behalf. Such money you passed on to the churches in our kingdom. In all of that time, I heard nothing of you extending any hint of warmth or assistance to your family on the other side of Europe. I’ve no idea what you did with your heart in the years since our last parting, but it is obvious you never noticed its lack.”

“Oh! Pardon me. I didn’t realize we had a guest in the royal halls this afternoon.”

Salazar turns around, discovering a frocked young priest regarding him in curiosity, a lit brazier suspended from a chain in his hand. It’s odd to hear true Castellano again. Nizar’s portrait speaks it, yes, but hints of his original, strange accent from his named Modern English lurk beneath his words. “My apologies as well if I startled you.” He hopes his own Castellano doesn’t sound as stilted as it feels after years of _franceis_. “I merely came to pay my respects.”

The young priest raises an eyebrow. “Sound echoes very well in these halls, good sir. I’m not certain I would dub your words as respectful.”

“Then call them honest,” Salazar replies. “May your days be kind, Father.”

“Honesty often serves when little else will.” The priest nods. “May God’s peace be upon you.”

Salazar removes himself from the abbey while thinking, _Not sarding likely_. The Christian God is probably a decent sort—Godric had certainly believed so—but Salazar has not known any measure of peace in years beyond counting.

Then, before any hint of Salazar’s return can reach royal ears, he travels to Seville by Desplazarse. He has only been there once before, long ago, when the city was held by the Umayyad Caliphate. Ferdinand reclaimed it by conquest in 1248, and immediately decided it was to be the new capital of Castile and León. Salazar thinks this is a stupid decision when Seville remains so close to the contested southern border, but it isn’t _his_ stupid decision. He won’t be the Magical Alférez who will have to contend with the results if the royal family finds themselves surrounded by an army.

King Alfonso X lives in the former palace of the Caliphate with his wife, the queen consort Violante of Aragon. Salazar dares the halls while hiding beneath the folds of his brother’s Cloak, not certain the Invisibility Charm will survive some of the magical defences he can sense around the palace. He doesn’t know who is currently named as Magical Alférez, but they seem to like adhering to the number of protections that Nizar would find proper—many of them.

He finds Alfonso in a council of state. Salazar chooses a column to lean against and waits, listening with half an ear to the bureaucracy required to successfully run a kingdom. In this, at least, Alfonso does not seem to be an idiot. It sounds as if the man is a bit less bloodthirsty than his father, inclined towards supporting art, history, and education even as he still makes plans for the kingdom’s defence. Berenguela did not give her daughter’s plight the attention she should have, but she may have filled her grandson’s ear with the idea of what makes a proper king—at least, one can hope. Alfonso has only held the throne for two weeks, and that is too soon to know for certain what sort of ruler he will be.

Perhaps not entirely wise, Salazar realizes. The king is already making plans that will see him eventually leading an army against the young country of Portugal to the west. That will likely not go over well with the royal family, all of whom Alfonso shares close ties of blood.

Salazar follows Alfonso through the palace after the council is concluded. When the man enters a large office, he gestures for his personal guard to remain outside the doors. Salazar slips through the doorway behind the king before the door is shut and sealed from the inside. Then Salazar retrieves his wand, casts a charm to muffle sound, and hexes the young king into unconsciousness while his back is turned.

When Alfonso awakens, he is seated at his own desk, if bound in place by glowing magical rope. Salazar is sitting across from his latest king, his boots propped up on the desk while he twirls his wand around his fingers. “Greetings to you, Your Majesty.” He watches as Alfonso makes a concerted effort to shout for help. “Surely your own Magical Alférez has informed you that it is of no use to fight a Silencing Charm.”

Alfonso stops attempting to shout and stares at him. Then he mouths, “Salazar.”

“Marqués Salazar Fernan, if you please, Your Majesty. We don’t have the sort of familiarity that allows you the freedom of my given name, and I’m not in the mood to grant it.”

The king loses his battle of wills to keep his thoughts to himself. “Say what you will,” he offers in angry silence.

“I’d merely thought to reintroduce myself to a man I’ve not seen since he was a boy of twelve.” Salazar shrugs and glances at his wand. “But then I recalled exactly why it’s been eighteen years since that time. I decided I was not going to allow you the chance to take advantage of my vows to our beloved kingdom and do to me what your father so unwisely chose. You can understand my concern.”

Alfonso narrows his eyes. “My father was certain you would never return.”

The lip-reading he learned in Court has always served Salazar well. “Then he was a fool. I hope that you are not. If you are wise, you will listen to me very, very closely, and agree with all I say.”

Salazar waits for the king to nod. He is still young enough that curiosity is carrying him through, not temper. That is an excellent sign. “Then understand how the magical titles of nobility work within your own kingdom, as I doubt you’ve been properly taught. Once a title is granted, a magician is tied to the land they’ve been named to guard until death. We can appoint others to act in our stead, which is why you have the delight of my grandnephew Diego’s company. The only way for it to be otherwise is if those of us holding the title reject it ourselves.”

He locks eyes with Alfonso. “I took my vows to serve this kingdom at the age of twelve, both as Magical Marqués of Castile and Magical Alférez to Sancho III, King of León. When I pledged myself, I meant every word—I will safeguard this kingdom as well as the land of my father for the whole of my life, and unfortunately for us both, that will be a long time yet. Had your father Ferdinand not allowed hatred to rule his heart, he would have remembered that a magical noble’s duties do not just extend to their landed title, but to the entire royal family. When your father banished me, he kept me from upholding my vows to our kingdom and to your family. I firmly believe that this idiocy contributed to the young death of your aunt Berenguela of León, Empress Consort of Constantinople. Your father’s decision leaves your cousin Marie of Brienne, Empress Consort of Constantinople, vulnerable to the worst sorts, which seems to include her own idiot husband, as well.

“I will not abandon my duty, nor will I ever again allow another to cause me to abandon it…but I will not fight your wars for you,” Salazar continues quietly. “If this land comes under a threat that those of your Court are not prepared to defend against, you will find me at your side. If the throne comes under attack, and your knights and magical nobles cannot protect you, I will be here. I will be in your Court once a year for the Christmas holiday, as it was a tradition established and consecrated by others long before we were both born. Otherwise? I will not darken your doorways.”

Alfonso looks thoughtful before he makes a specific motion with his fingers, a Court gesture that requests private words be exchanged. Salazar judges the expression on the man’s face and the thoughts lurking behind Alfonso’s eyes before he lifts the Silencing Charm with a brief flick of his wand.

“Can you really not die?” is the king’s surprising first question.

Salazar Vanishes the magical bindings securing Alfonso to his chair and puts his wand away. “Some unfortunate bastard landed a lucky blow with his crossbow fifty years ago. The bolt went through my eye and lodged itself in the back of my own skull. I had to pry it out with my bare hands.”

“Then you cannot.” Alfonso leans back in his chair. “Father was certain it was a falsehood—that it was as you often told others in Court, Marqués Salazar: you are of a long-lived line.”

“The latter was true before this state of affairs, Your Majesty, so I’ve not lied about that at all.” Salazar dislikes the fact that this is becoming a falsehood for his and Estefania’s descendants. The long signs of youth and centuries of life that once followed his father’s bloodline have all but vanished.

“All you’ve said is true, isn’t it?”

“The lasting pleasure of the truth is finer than the brief amusement of a lie,” Salazar replies.

“Then my family owes you recompense for keeping you away from your sworn duties,” Alfonso says.

Salazar blinks a few times. “Pardon?”

“I would offer any of my nobles the same if they had been treated in unjust fashion without benefit to the kingdom.” Alfonso looks to be enjoying the startled expression on Salazar’s face. “Name your recompense. Within reason, please, Marqués Salazar.”

“Then…the Empress’s son lingers as a hostage for Venetian merchants, Your Majesty. If his ransom were paid, I would consider all hint of insult forgiven.”

“I was afraid you might choose that.” Alfonso leans back in his seat and grimaces. “Cousin Marie once asked Father for assistance, and Father’s response was…it would be better if the denial had come from Grandmother, but she was not acting as Regent at the time. You’ve borne witness to my father’s viciousness. My cousin is very much of my family, and does not forgive or forget easily. When I offered my assistance after Father’s death, she refused. Cousin Marie is in the west now, intent on raising money for Philip de Courtenay’s ransom on her own. I fear she will not succeed. Constantinople is politically weakened by war and crippled by debt. No one wishes to give money to an Empire that is now barely more than a city. I’m afraid you’ll need to request something else, Marqués Salazar.”

“Salazar,” he says. “You have already proven that you have the manners to use my name.”

The king inclines his head. “Then unless circumstances require it, I am Alfonso.”

“There is one other thing,” Salazar realizes. “My father’s home and lands in Ipuzko—”

“You mean Guipúzcoa?”

Salazar does his best not to roll his eyes. “Yes. They’re tied to the noble magical title that was once held over Castile, and now is held over Burgos. If _Etxea Antzinako Serpentsen_ _Ipuzkoan_ could once again be made independent, beholden to none and owned by myself, my brother, and our specifically named descendants…that is a gift I would be most grateful to receive.”

Alfonso raises an eyebrow. “You have a brother who still lives?”

If he did not need to be certain that Nizar is named as a holder of the estate in Ipuzko, Salazar would never mention him…but it has to be done. There may not be time for it later. “My younger brother is acting as the catalyst for a complicated magical working meant to safeguard many lives. It is…he is unavailable. I’d prefer it be otherwise.”

“I see. As I have six siblings and one sister by my father’s second marriage, I believe I understand your sentiment.” Alfonso retrieves a blank sheet of fine paper from his desk. “State for me your full name and titles, the name of your brother and his titles, the name of the property in question, and then please spell it for me one final time in the Euskaran tongue. I wish for no one to be able to mistake this gesture for what it is.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Alfonso,” the king reminds him, already copying down the date before he begins on the list of royal titles. “I expect to see you over the Christmas holiday in my Court, Salazar, even if it is only for the day of our Savior’s birth.”

This isn’t quite what Salazar expected of this meeting, but he thinks he could serve this king and be glad of it. “Alfonso, I will be certain to attend.”

When it’s done, the king demands Salazar view the composed deed and make certain it is free of errors, and to his specifications. Salazar reads through the document twice and finds it is exactly as he requested—Alfonso has even redirected a very small percentage of the Magical Burgos title’s yearly allotment to the land in Ipuzko. “Only until your death, or until you do choose to give up your title in this kingdom, of course,” Alfonso says of the allotment.

“Of course.” Salazar does not necessarily need the money, but it will not hurt to receive coin to maintain an estate that will now have elves living in it, if no one human except for those times he chooses to dwell there. “It is generous of you to add reward beyond what is asked for.”

“That is how one keeps allies. I did listen to my grandmother,” Alfonso says dryly as he affixes the royal seal in wax beneath his signature. “Let me make a second copy, and then please release the magic on the doors. I’ll need for my guard to send for those who will make further copies. I will ensure that this ruling is carried out, and that it will stand in perpetuity.”


	7. Marie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I do hate it when I’ve made others sad for no good reason. If they’re to be sad, I prefer they have earned it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still running fever of 100 degrees for no apparent reason other than this is a thing that is happening. But chapter for the Fundraisening, and credit to the usual beta quartet for going along with my madness.

Salazar spends the rest of that day, night, and the next morning in the king’s company. It’s been far too long since someone properly educated sat on the throne, and Alfonso is quite willing to use his learning to his utmost advantage. Salazar departs Seville in a pleasant mood, thinking that he may not growl and curse his way through Alfonso X’s reign. That would be a fine change.

Only then does he return to France to give thanks to his hostess of eighteen years. He knows from Blanche’s recent missives that she has been staying in the royal castle of Melun, southeast of Paris—the better to avoid Queen Margaret, who remains in Paris awaiting her husband’s return from the Crusades. Salazar would have been pleased if neither of the idiots returned from Egypt, but he did not get his wish with Ferdinand. Louis IX will most likely return to France with his fanaticism undiminished. Gods know Margaret is still just as rabid.

Salazar recognizes Blanche’s chamberlain, who has been with her since she married Louis VIII in the year 1200. “Velasco.”

Velasco smiles and grants him the proper bow of the Castilian Court. “Lord Salazar. It is a pleasure to see you again. Is all well in regards to our homeland’s new king?”

“He isn’t an idiot. It’s quite the relief,” Salazar replies.

Velasco allows himself a wider smile before he gentles his features back to the placid mask he uses before the Court. “The Queen Mother is in the gardens today.” Velasco hesitates. “A family member is here on a long visit. They are out of doors together to enjoy the good weather.”

“Ah. Am I not to meet this family member?” Salazar asks, amused.

“If His Majesty Ferdinand still ruled, I do not think it would be advisable. However, those are introductions best left to the Queen Mother.”

Now Salazar is curious. It is unlike Velasco to be so vague, but Salazar has been living on the edge of Brittany for eighteen years. People can change when granted time and opportunity.

He follows Velasco through the palace and into the gardens beyond it, protected on all sides by high stone walls topped by fierce spikes. Velasco turns the corner of a hedgerow before Salazar. “Your Majesty, we’ve a guest.”

“Oh, how delightful!” Blanche’s voice carries well, but holds a weak, wavering quality. Salazar feels his brow furrow with worry. At sixty-four years of age, Blanche is not young by current standards, but she has always enjoyed great vitality. That, however, is the voice of a woman who will be passing on from this world. If not soon, then by the end of the year.

Damn. He hates losing allies, and Blanche has never held his deeds, good or ill, against him.

Salazar rounds the corner and drops into a proper bow out of long-trained habit. “Your Majesty.”

“Oh!” When Salazar straightens, Blanche has her hand against her heart and a look of joy in her eyes. “Then you received my message, after all!”

“If Your Majesty is referring to anything preceding the first of May, then no, I have not—” Salazar’s voice breaks, and he can’t find words again.

Sitting next to Blanche on the stone bench is a young woman in her mid-twenties. She has nearly black hair, pale skin, and familiar, gold-touched green eyes. She looks very much like her mother and grandmother, but there is no denying the signs of the Deslizarse blood that flows through her veins.

“You didn’t know! Oh, what dreadful timing, then. I did not want it to be such a shock. I sent word the moment we knew that King Ferdinand had passed on, but…” Blanche trails off and reaches out to pat Marie’s hand. “I am doing you both a disservice. Marie of Brienne, Empress Consort of Constantinople, this is the Marqués Salazar Fernan of House Deslizarse in Castile and Guipúzcoa, a longtime friend of our family. Lord Salazar, this is the Empress Marie, my grandniece.”

The only thing that carries him through the next moment is habit and centuries of the political dance. “Marie,” he whispers, and clears his throat. “Your Imperial Majesty. A pleasure.”

“And a pleasure to greet you as well, Lord Salazar,” Marie replies, glancing at Blanche. “I can depart; it is obvious you came here to speak with my Aunt Blanche.”

“No. No, please don’t,” Salazar manages, and then utterly blanks out on the next few minutes. He finds himself sitting on a padded settee in the front receiving room of the castle. He feels like he’s run for leagues, his breath too tight and painful in his chest. When his vision blurs, he wipes his eyes and discovers that he must have been intent upon tears for quite a while.

“Lord Salazar?”

Salazar is not ashamed of the fact that he nearly leaps through the nearest wall in surprise. He breathes out in dismay, fetching a handkerchief from his pouch to clean his face. “Empress. My apologies.”

“None are needed.” Marie is standing a polite distance away, her head tilted slightly to one side. “I am very sorry to have startled you.”

Salazar shakes his head. “That is not your fault. That is my failing.”

“Failing?” Marie presses her lips together in a manner that reminds Salazar of her mother. “No. I do not think it a failing. I only regret that I’ve only just now learned who you are to me, and why we’ve never met before now.”

“Once. We met…once.” Salazar swallows. “In Jerusalem, before your father lost that throne. You were a year old. Your mother wanted me to greet her second child properly, and delayed your christening for that very reason.”

Marie ventures closer, as if approaching a wild animal, before she seats herself on the opposite end of the settee. “I’ve never had a grandfather before. Not that I can recall. The man who I thought to be mother’s father died when I was five, though I never met him. Father’s father was already long dead.”

Salazar glances down at the rug on the floor, letting his eyes trace its Persian patterns. “I wished to be there. At your wedding. Your uncle had other ideas.”

“Aunt Blanche informed me of that, as well, though I did not know until now.” Marie sounds just as hesitant as he feels. “Father once told me that he put the fear of God into my husband regarding the sanctity of my body on behalf of his father-in-law. He meant you, didn’t he?”

Salazar turns the silver ring on his right middle finger, watching the original form of the Deslizarse crest flash by. “I was made to marry at twelve and ordered to produce an Heir at once. I have strong feelings about children being forced to wed.”

“I’m…grateful. I remember being terrified of my husband in those days. Whatever you said to my father, who then spoke to Baldwin, must have been quite effective.” When Salazar glances up, Marie is smiling. “Mother said it probably involved a form of castration, but would grant me no details.”

“That is for the best. I was not in the kindest of moods when I discovered you were already bound to a wedding contract.” Salazar tries to remember what it’s like when his heart isn’t hammering in his chest. He hasn’t been this nervous in years. “I am sorry.”

Marie eyes him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says in a dry voice, and he can’t help it—he laughs. “Much better. I do hate it when I’ve made others sad for no good reason. If they’re to be sad, I prefer they have earned it.”

“Now there is a bit of viciousness that could be laid at the feet of either of our families.” Salazar attempts to think of something to say that doesn’t sound foolish and fails. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“So am I. I wouldn’t have learned of you otherwise, and that, I think, would be a terrible loss for us both.” Marie half-turns and holds out her hand to him until he accepts it, her fingers resting over his. “We have the same eyes,” she says in a wondering voice, and smiles. “Unless the situation demands otherwise, I am Marie…Grandfather.”

That stupid choked feeling is back. “Given that you outrank me by every European measure of thought, I am always Salazar to you, Granddaughter.”

He spends the rest of his day in Marie’s company. She has the intelligence of her mother and grandmother, but he is not being arrogant when he notices that she holds the shine of his family as well. She carries magic within her blood still, even if she is non-magical herself.

When his granddaughter retires for the evening, he seeks out Blanche. As he suspected, she is not finding it easy to rest at night. “You should have told me.”

“And have you fly across France to be here, and then violate your own vows to Castile in order to murder my idiot nephew?” Blanche lets out a ratcheting cough and shakes her head. “No. It was necessary to wait until Ferdinand was dead, Salazar. My only regret is that my correspondence did not reach you in time to warn you of whom you would find in my company.”

“I knew that Marie was in Europe to raise money for her son’s ransom, but nothing more than that,” Salazar says.

Blanche nods as she makes her slow way around her sleeping chamber. “She has been here since the summer of 1249, sent on by Baldwin alone when the fool finally bothered to return from the Crusades. He raises money to wage war, but cannot be bothered to buy back his own Heir.”

“So I’ve heard.” Salazar thinks it best that Baldwin II is in Constantinople. The idiot would be wise to _remain_ in Constantinople. “You are not well, Blanche.”

“Oh, such a polite spin you put on it,” Blanche says, chuckling. “You mean that I am dying.”

“I do not have to be impolite if I do not wish to be.”

“Impolite.” Blanche smiles. “Oh, Salazar. You’ve seen many of us die, and still it bothers you so.”

“Everyone is important. Everyone matters,” Salazar responds in a tight voice. “It will always pain me.”

“Unless you do not like them.” Blanche grins when he affects an innocent air. “I have missed your company these many years. Correspondence is pleasant, but often not enough.” She sits down on the bench placed before her bed. “Marie will retire to Baldwin’s Imperial estates in Namur when I die. The properties are contested, but Marie already knows that if things go poorly, she is welcome in the Court of Castile. I hope that for as long as she remains in Europe, you will look after her.”

“Of course I will. We had that discussion once before, years ago.” Salazar smiles. “If Marie would allow it, I would pay the ransom to free Philip from Venice tomorrow, but she comes by her stubbornness honestly.”

“That she does,” Blanche agrees. “Stay the week with us, Salazar. Come to know your granddaughter. She has no close family but for us. Prove that you are the family that she deserves.”

Salazar drops his head into a short bow. “Of course I will.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

It isn’t just Castile that has adopted the habit of referring to Ipuzko by the longer name of Guipúzcoa. Even Salazar’s own people are doing it, calling it Gipuzko or Gipuzka. There has always been a hint of the letter _G_ lurking before that _I_ , but there is no need to make it so pronounced, nor was there a need to take the term Ipuzkoan, steal its last _A_ , and add it to Ipuzko!

He’s fighting a losing battle and he knows it. It’s best to go choose to fight a losing battle with the Elves of Ur Leial.

The grounds of his father’s home look like the ancient fortress has inhabitants again. There is no remaining hint of damage to the stones, and the water lines are gone. The weeds have all been cleared away, replaced by crushed rock for paths except where the raised herb beds and gardens are planted. A brilliant elf even managed to uncover the wild roses that Salazar’s grandfather planted for his wife, and has them almost tamed to an expanse of wood to keep them growing upwards rather than outwards.

He’s been gone a mere nine days. Norman elves are terrifying.

The inside of the old stone keep looks as pleasant as it did when families still dwelled here. Salazar isn’t certain he can handle this many miracles in a row. “How?”

Gizzet looks at him like he’s exceptionally stupid. “We are elves,” he says scathingly. “Our old home was in far worse condition when we first dwelled there.”

Salazar is all but certain he does not want to know how much worse it could have been. His father’s home was beginning to wear down, inside and out, before he was temporarily exiled from his own kingdom. “Was anything lost to water damage?” He already lost his first gathered library to floodwaters, and can only hope that the Preservation Charms and protections he placed upon this reformed library held true against the elements.

Gizzet shakes his head. “There was only dust to clean and aging things to repair. This place of Ancient Serpents is ready to be lived in by whoever you wish to bring here.” The old elf lowers his voice. “Do you know that you have basilisks in the cavern below?”

Salazar lets out a relieved sigh. “Oh, thank gods,” he says, bolting for the stairs that will take him down to the lowest level of the home. Over a century ago, as the tide against magic shifted, Salazar exhausted himself to create another tunnel of many, many miles to connect the old Burgos crypt to the cave system in Ipuzko. He’d slept for days afterwards, but making certain the basilisks could travel back and forth as they pleased was worth the cost.

He yanks out his wand when all the light from the torches vanishes as he ventures into the large chamber. It isn’t as vast as the cave beneath the family’s old home in Burgos, but it suits their needs when there are plenty of tunnels for large basilisks to travel through.

Sometimes it’s inconvenient that some Basque terms just do not work for magic. “ _Luz de todas luces._ ”

The torches in the chamber flare to life. The magic burns with the blue-green cast of driftwood it always gains with close proximity to the ocean.

He doesn’t hear anything in the chamber. No sounds of heavy, slithering bodies. No distant hissing of Parseltongue.

“Please,” Salazar whispers, and then calls, “ _Çinara_?”

He forces himself to wait in patient stillness. She is not yet that old, though she may be far away. It will take time for the basilisk matriarch to gain awareness of his presence again and seek him out.

“ _Grandson of my Chosen_!”

Salazar smiles when he hears her words echo down one of the long tunnels. “ _Çinara_.”

In another five minutes, he is surrounded by the coils of a massive, jewel-eyed basilisk who is trying her best to smother him in joy without literally suffocating him. “ _You are back! You have been gone for too long. What were you thinking? You are foolish_!”

Salazar laughs and rests his face against her silken scales. “ _Hello, dearest. I’d no intention of being gone so long, but our previous king banished me. I couldn’t return until the idiot died_.”

“ _Fool indeed, then! You might have kept him from death if he had any sense at all_.” Çinara scents him with her tongue. “ _You smell of family_.”

“ _I was able to see Marie. My granddaughter_.” Salazar smiles when Çinara emits joyful sounds. “ _She will be in France for quite a while yet. I have been…invited. To…_ ”

“ _You will know your family_ ,” Çinara says to end his dithering. “ _This is as it should be. Return tomorrow, Salazar. I will tell the others, and by then, the Nest will be here. We have all missed you_.”

“ _I’ve missed you, too. So much_.” Salazar runs his fingernails along her scales, causing her to half-close her eyes in pleasure. “ _Oh, and I’ve somehow been adopted by an entire clan of elves. Be certain the rest of the Nest knows that they are neither rodents nor food_.”

“ _As if we would ever make such an error_ ,” Çinara retorts. “ _Elves will be good for you. It is not wise to dwell here alone. The stones are too restless when the bloodline is thin. I will be back tomorrow_.”

Salazar watches her leave, surprised by her comment about the stones. He’s never noticed—but then, he hasn’t been able to live here for very long since it became necessary to hide this place from all others. Perhaps it is something that goes beyond his sense of the Earth.

He explores his old quarters, which are not as grand as those in Hogewáþ or the keep in Normandy, but Salazar does not need much space for public sitting or sleeping when the whole of this home belongs to him. The bed has been graced with new linens; Jebbiel tells him that rodents assaulted the original inhabitants. Salazar doubts those rodents lived for very long afterwards, not if a young basilisk scented their presence. All of his belongings are otherwise where they should be, guarded by magic and untouched.

Salazar stares at Nizar’s quarters for a moment in silent bafflement. He said nothing to the elves, and there is nothing here to genuinely denote ownership…and yet still the elves recognized that this space was not available, replaced any destroyed cloth, and left it alone. They did the same with the Lady’s quarters, the original guest quarters set aside for those pledged or married to one another, and several individual chambers—all of the rooms that have their own attached private bathing room. The rest of the rooms on this side of the castle were already stripped bare, so they were cleaned only and left alone. The elves took up the rows of sleeping chambers on the other side of the castle, keeping to their preference of a private living space for the clan.

The kitchen is pristine and being used by satisfied elves. The larder is stocked. The public areas of the keep are all spotless. Tapestries that took rodent damage have been expertly repaired. The paintings he had to retrieve from the home in Burgos when the family began to forget his existence greet him with enthusiasm. Even Estefania manages to sound excited, and her portrait is usually insistent upon cool somberness. On these walls hang his grandparents from both sides of the family. Estefania, Andoni, and all of their children and grandchildren. Orellana. Marion. All of their children and those grandchildren whose portraits Salazar could acquire. Nizar’s three children and all of Galiena’s children are safe within their painted confines.

Salazar goes into the library and takes a deep breath, glad to smell nothing but leather, paper, and varying types of ink perfuming the air. He takes out the folded canvas from his clothes, retrieves the frame, and begins putting Nizar’s portrait back together. “Home,” he says, and places the portrait in its usual place on the wall opposite the library fireplace.

Nizar glances around and then sighs in pleasure. “I know. I can always tell. How did it fare?”

“Worse on the outside, but all right on the inside. The others are awake and looking for you,” Salazar says. That’s all the invitation Nizar needs to vacate the portrait frame to seek out the rest of their family.

That is the last thing he knows to do with himself for the day. At loose ends, Salazar goes back downstairs long enough to retrieve his favorite lute, which he was forced to leave behind when Ferdinand issued his idiotic command.

 _And if he had not, you would not have encountered those who were meant to be gifted the Hallows_ , Salazar thinks, which doesn’t help his mood at all. He retreats outside and climbs up onto the corner of the stone ramparts. He settles down onto the stone and releases the protective magics on the lute, retuning it by careful degrees until the sound emitted by each string is once again perfection.

The last time he sat upon this wall with a lute, he was here with Nizar, who never lost his fondness for perching in high, windy places. His brother had no fear of heights, no terror of falling. For him, the air and wind were freedom.

That’s the song Salazar finds himself playing, one of the two Nizar carried with him from his past. Not the one whose words he knew, the one that reminded him of death in a cemetery, but the song Nizar always insisted was meant for a stringed instrument.

Salazar breaks off the song before the final chords when he realizes he can hear a woman shouting. “ _Entzun zaitut! Musika entzuten dut! Non zaude_?”

He scrambles up and turns in a circle until he sees her, standing on one of the hills nearer to the ocean and glaring at the valley. She can’t see this place, but she should not be able to _hear_ it, either.

Unless the Loyalty Charm has a gap in its design that none of them ever realized upon its creation. Sound. They accounted for sound that took place within the structure to be guarded, but did they remember to consider sounds that originated on the outside?

Shit. He can’t recall.

“ _Eta orain lasaia da berriro_.” She is definitely mocking him. “ _Zara lotsatia_?”

Salazar slips the lute’s leather strap over his shoulders and stands up before using Desplazarse to travel to that distant hill. “There are not many brave enough to shout at music coming from an empty valley, you know.”

The dark-haired woman lets out a startled shriek and tumbles backwards. Salazar reaches out and catches her hand before she can roll the entire way down the hillside. “Oh, so you’re only brave when we’re invisible musicians, then?”

She glares at him and yanks on his hand to pull herself upright, then takes the time to dust off her skirt. “No,” she says. “Are you always rude enough to appear out of thin air, or do you prefer to surprise your victims to their deaths?”

Salazar makes a show of peering down the hill. “That would be a very pathetic death. Broken bones, perhaps, but not death. Unless you are inclined to such? If so, the cliffs are in that direction.”

The corners of her mouth are gaining a suspicious twitch. “There are not enough rocks waiting in the water below. That would also not work very well. Who are you to be out here in this place alone?”

“I live here.” Salazar smiles when her eyebrows rise in polite disbelief. “I truly do. Just because you cannot see something does not mean it isn’t there.”

“If I hex you into pieces, will I be able to see it then?” she asks.

“I could hex you first and save us both the trouble,” Salazar replies. “What are you doing out here, walking along the hills where none such as myself live?”

“I like to walk the hills in the evening.” She gives him an odd look. “I’ve simply never heard music before.”

“I’ve…been away.” He lasts another minute before he can’t stand it. “What is your name, Wanderer?”

She holds out her hand. “Katarin of Donostia. And you are?”

Salazar takes her hand and feels a wide, foolish grin steal over his face. “It is an absolute pleasure to greet you, Katarin of Donostia. I am Salazar.”

Katarin nods just before her eyes widen. “Wait. Salazar, just Salazar, or are you _that_ Salazar?”

“Dear gods, what are they saying about me _now_?” Salazar asks in dismay.

She laughs at him. “You must not be intent on your name being secret if you’re that easy to fool!”

“It isn’t a secret. I just choose not to tell anyone,” Salazar says, to her continued amusement. “It isn’t my doing at all if they then figure it out for themselves.”

“Oh, I like you. You’re completely full of sharp words and nonsense.” Katarin smiles. “What tune were you playing on that lute, Salazar of Nonsense?”

Salazar still has a ridiculous smile on his face. “I can’t tell you that, as I don’t know. My brother taught it to me, but was never taught the name of it himself.”

“Well, then.” Katarin sits down on the soft grass and gives him an expectant look. “Play it again and share it properly this time.”

Salazar gives her a bemused stare. “How old are you, Katarin of Donostia?”

“I’m twenty-seven, and before you get any foolish notions into your head, I go where I please and I require no chaperones of any sort!” Katarin gives him a haughty stare that is belied by the laughter in her eyes. “Or do I need to show you my wand and prove it?”

“Those sorts of notions are indeed foolish, and I would absolutely love to see the wand of a spirited magician such as yourself…but first, you asked for a song.” Salazar sits down on the grass beside her, the span of a tilted hand all that separates them from touching at the knees. When he looks at her from the corner of his eye, she is smiling, an expression of fierce, expectant joy.

It helps Salazar to remember that this is what peace feels like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part VII *might* have another chapter, but that's up in the air because I've been running a 100F degree fever for nearly a week. No promises on it, though I'd prefer it be shiny and written already.
> 
> Thanks for hanging in there with me, and for all the love and support. It means the world to me. <3


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